Category Archives: gun control

A Can of Peas or a Gun?? Tough Choices!

I heard on the news today there had recently been a shooting attack at a big box store called Costco.  I have it on good authority that this is not possible!! Costco is a gun free zone! Admittedly they only came clean in 2014 that they were gun free. Before that they didn’t want to tick off gun owners by being proudly gun free.

But despite this gold standard of safety it seems an as yet unnamed man entered Costco today yelling and brandishing a gun. No word yet on what type of gun went crazy today and grabbed a nearby human and forced him to transport him to the gun free Costco. Even though the gun knew it was not welcome there, it forced the human to provide transportation. As the apparently distraught human entered Costco it was yelling. The employees tried to lower the security gates but were unable to lower it in time.

People fled for the exits as they realized what was happening and one little 82 year old lady struggled to keep up with the crowd as they stampeded towards safety.

But earthly angels need to shop too. And apparently one was shopping in the store when the out of control gun and the hapless shouting human made their entry. An off duty police officer. As panicked shoppers and employees fled out the store the officer pulled his gun and his badge and held them up so people could see. And as the defenseless fled towards safety a good guy with a gun went to confront evil. And he killed it. There were no other casualties. None. Apparently the good guy gun was better than the bad guy gun. Because after all, it’s all about an inanimate piece of metal right?

But I have lingering questions. Will the good guy with a gun be prosecuted by Costco? I mean, after all, he wasn’t on duty.  And he obviously was carrying a gun in a “gun free zone”! Did the off-duty police officer check to see how many blacks vs how many whites were in the store? Aren’t they all suppose to be racist according to BLM?  Are there any other types of Costco members that they have no concern for besides the 82 year old woman that struggled to keep up and escape? Perhaps they also have no regard for young children. They can’t run very fast either. Mothers carrying infants? They are sure to be slower. Questions for Costco to ponder, what is their “target” demographic?  Either way, if shopping in a store that has made it clear that you must be defenseless and vulnerable to be welcome is your thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if Costco doesn’t have a sale on memberships err long.

I was told by someone I respect enormously I should be able to kill someone with a can of peas, should the occasion call for it, or the need arise. But do battle with a can of peas (not that I’m not willing, should the occasion call for it) instead of a gun?  Inconceivable

 

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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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“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.


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If they have a case, why do victim disarmers have to lie?

As you may have noticed from previous number-crunching, I’m quite analytically inclined. When I see or hear something that doesn’t sound right, it gnaws at me until I check it out. Like this:

Emotions run high during Politech’s gun control forum
“So it’s really a touchy issue on a sense of security. Also if you want to go to domestic violence, most women who are around guns, 50 percent of the time will be shot using their own weapon,” Gavran said. “So there are a lot of challenges with that.”

Really? 50% of women around guns will be shot with their own weapon?

My guess is that emotions ran high because lies like that were allowed.

According to a MarieClaire.com and Harvard Injury Control Research Center survey 32% of women live in households with firearm. I think that counts as being “around” guns. 32% of 162,000,000 women would be 51,840,000. 50% of those would be 25,920,000 women shot.

The FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report says there were only 1,217,400 violent crimes (male and female; murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) last year. Yet ditz Gavran claims that just women shot is more than 21 times that.

But maybe Gavran meant 50% of the MC/HIRC reported 12% of women who own guns. That gets us down to 9,720,000 to about 8 times the number of total violent crimes for males and females alike.

Let’s stroll over to the CDC’s WISQARS and see what they say about it. 6,368 total nonfatal firearms assaults, and 1,950 fatal firearms assaults, for a total of 8,318. A far cry from 25,920,000 or even 9,720,000.

OK, I’ll be generous. Rather than what she said, maybe she meant to limit the population strictly to domestic violence cases; so 50% of female domestic violence victims.

Uh oh. It says here that females are the victims in 85% of 960,000 estimated annual domestic violent incidents, giving us 816,000 victims, half of which would be firearms by Gavran’s claim: 408,000. Only 49 times the number of fatal and nonfatal female firearms injuries the CDC reports.

Wait. 12% of women own guns. So .12 times 816,000 is 97,920. Half of that is 48,960. Only six times as many as the total the CDC reports.

Pure. Effing. B. S.

But as the man said, there’s more.

Perry was able to speak on what he considered naivety in regards to fears of students carrying guns around the campus. Gavran responded to Perry, saying there were accidental discharges around some universities in Texas.

She went on to say there is no way of knowing all of the effects of Campus Carry because the Clery Act legislation does not require reporting of accidental discharges.

I searched. I found one. More than a year ago. If the ditz has better data, she should cite it.

Or STFU.

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Complicity?

Complicity of current gun laws makes people guilty of slaughter
Are you complicit?

Re: the mindless slaughter of men, women and children in a church in Texas, at a hotel in Las Vegas and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct. plus many others too numerous to mention.

You are complicit if you are an elected official voting to block adequate gun control laws! You have the blood of innocent individuals on your hands.

I should like to note that, by his peculiar standard of law, Mr. Blank is complicit in the murder of my brother who was disarmed by the sort of retroactive — ex post facto — gun control he likes.

By his standard, Blank is complicit in the murder of Carol Bowne, killed while waiting for her lawfully purchased defensive tool; mandatory waiting period gun control.

By his standard, Blank is complicit in the murders of 23 people in Luby’s Diner, where gun control had disarmed Dr. Suzanna Gratia.

Considering that Sandy Hook Elementary School was a “gun-free zone” by federal gun control, with lawfully possessed defensive arms banned, by his standard, Blank is complicit in those murders as well.

I’m sure guilt-stricken Blank will be contacting his representatives immediately to call for an end to victim disarmament.


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Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

Die-Anne Feinswine’s Assault Weapons Ban of 2017 is out. It’s worth a read. In some respects it’s much like its 1994 predecessor, only more so. Particularly in that it isn’t a ban. Hang on to that thought.

The first section sets up definitions. “Assault weapons” become pretty much any semiautomatic firearm with a detachable magazine and any 1 of several other features: pistol grip, pistol grip (specifically includes thumbhole stocks), forward grip, barrel shroud, adjustable stock, shoulder thing that goes up, threaded barrel, and so forth. Pistols specifically have their own characteristics, which you can guess from Feinstein’s previous ranting.

She got smart on one point. Back in the ’90s, manufacturers simply redesigned platforms to conform to the law (which she fein-whined was taking advantage of a “loophole”). This time she remembered to ban any variant of pages of specified firearms. So gun makers can’t take an AR-15 and saw off the pistol grip or weld the magazine in place and call it an AR-15PB (post-ban).

They’ll have to give it a new model number series. I suggest the UYDF-17. You can figure it out.

Then she gets to the ban-that-isn’t.

Section 922 of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(v) (1) It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon.

(2) Paragraph (1) shall not apply to the possession, sale, or transfer of any semiautomatic assault weapon otherwise lawfully possessed under Federal law on the date of enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017.

Yes, existing gear is grandfathered. As before, her “assault weapon ban” doesn’t ban a single firearm, and — gun owners having learned the lesson of her last attempt — have far more “assault weapons” on hand than they did in 1994.

Standard capacity magazines are next to not-go, with similar language merely banning future manufacture or importation of detachable magazines with capacity greater than 10 rounds, existing magazines grandfathered.

Government entities are all exempted, of course.

Up next, “safe storage.” Yeah, if you aren’t carrying it, or have it within arms reach, lock it up. Unloaded. Ammunition elsewhere. Feinstein really hates children.

“High capacity” magazines for government are going to get more expensive, but hey: taxpayers have deep pockets. New “assault weapons” and magazines must be serial-numbered and marked with date of manufacture.

She then inserts 90-some pages of specific firearms that are exempted from this law’s restrictions, which strikes me as stupid because the ones I recognize don’t fit her “assault weapon” definition anyway. She never was that bright.

Transfers of grandfathered “assault weapons” would have to go through an FFL. A private seller has to turn it over to the FFL, who has to enter it into his inventory records. The buyer will have to fill out a 4473, just as if the firearm were being purchased from the FFL, and be run through NICS. There is no exemption for gifts or loans, even between family members.

She’ll graciously allow you to let the buyer handle it for pre-purchase inspection without the FFL and NICS check. Oh, goody.

Now back to that thought I started with; why a ban that isn’t a ban? She did that before, and we know how that turned out.

  • Strictly by the numbers, crimes committed with firearms fitting the ’94 definition of “assault weapon” did go down. But it was statistically meaningless because those firearms were always rarely used by criminals. It’s like a town that saw one case of measles one year, then had 100% percent increase the next when two siblings get the measles. Statistically meaningless in a town of a couple hundred thousand or more.
  • Overall, firearms crime remained roughly the same. A few more hand gun crimes compensated for “assault weapons.”
  • A frickin’ huge number of evil, wicked “assault weapons” were transferred in panic-buying before the ’94 ban went into effect. So the imminent law had the effect of a subsidy for firearm manufacturers and dealers.If Feinstein — or her staffers/handlers — have a brain amongst them, they know this. They know every time someone makes serious banning noises (Obama election sound familiar?) sales skyrocket. “Gun Salesman of the Year.” Prices go through the roof.

    We know Feinstein isn’t bright. But is she crazy? Or is she taking brib campaign contributions from the evil gun industry?


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

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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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We don’ need no steenkin’ due process

“Extreme risk protective orders” (ERPO) are the latest fad of the victim disarmers who snidely assure that one more law will save us from “gun violence.”

They don’t care about violence inflicted by any other means.

The TL;DR if you didn’t follow those links is that ERPOs allow — variously in assorted state implementations; typically family, friends, co-workers, cops — people to petition the courts to have someone’s firearms taken away because they fear that person is at risk of harming herself or others. And who could possibly be in favor of hurting people?

What they don’t tell you is that protective orders are already available. The tricky part is “due process.” Now, a judge can issue an order for a potentially violent person to stay away from the allegedly threatened person. A judge can call the potentially violent person in to see if, just maybe, he should be sent in for a mental health evaluation. The first isn’t too big a deal, and the second incorporates constitutional due process because the one who may be confined is in court to have his say.

As I said, ERPOs lack that due process, by deliberate intent. The accused isn’t told about the hearing until afterwards, when the cops show up to confiscate firearms. Conventional initial protective order hearings may or may not include the accused; ERPOs codify that lack in law.

Ex parte is a legal fiction that claims that, in certain emergency situations, there’s no time for due process, or that tipping off the accused could allow her to do something bad before she’s served with the order. That’s a good thing, right?

No. A conventional protective order amounts to a preliminary emergency injunction, and the accused will get a hearing. ERPOs make no allowance for hearings until after property is taken, and then the burden is on the accused to prove his innocence. No due process; problem.

But it’s a terrible emergency. The guy is dangerous. Really, really so dangerous we don’t have time for due process, or to worry about prior restraint.

But apparently not so dangerous as to justify taking him into custody. A judge could require that in his order. Or not.

And there’s my problem: if the accused is so dangerous that he must be preemptively disarmed of firearms without notice, then he shouldn’t left free to walk the streets…

…say, with a crowbar, to the home of his accuser, who is now relying on a shield of paper. But who cares about crowbar — or knife — violence? After all, it’s a lot tougher to take out an oath-breaking, bodyguarded politician with a crowbar — or knife — than with a rifle at a distance.

Or maybe the — improperly? — accused is left on the street weaponless to defend himself against a — baseless? — accuser with a grudge, who manipulated the system into rendering his victim harmless. Maybe ERPOs should disarm both parties until it’s sorted out.

Rights and property should never be taken without real due process.


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Ancient Mysteries

While the current news cycle churns out reports about multiple bills to ban bump-fire stocks and other accessories, or to ban nearly all semiautomatic rifles, let us cast our minds back to the ancient — in lamestream media time — history to the event that prompted this round of Second Amendment infringements.

Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, where the uninformed world discovered “bump-fire.” You know the narrative: A multimillionnaire dragged a couple dozen semiautomatic weapons to his 32nd floor suite. A dozen of them were equipped with evil bump-fire stocks. He broke out two windows and used those bump-fire “fully automatic” weapons of mass destruction to hose down a crowd of 20,000+ country music fans who probably deserved it because they’re nasty NRA gun owners themselves.

So our heroes in Washington, DC were forced to protect us by offering legislation to deny stuff to the 55 to 120 million gun owners who didn’t do it. “Bump stocks” must go! Bump stock manufacturers must pay for their crimes!

Whoa. Like I said, cast your minds back in time. To… say, October 2, 2017.

Did you see that? At least one fully automatic weapon and weapons equipped with bumpstocks.

The LA Times reported that other weapons were being examined to determine if they had been converted to full auto.

The Weekly Standard reported at least fully automatic weapon as well.

Dennis Michael Lynch noted it, too.

But the automatic weapon(s?) vanished from the narrative. Perhaps I overlooked it, but my searches turn up no “correction” that, “Oh, we didn’t mean full auto,” or, “That person was mistaken; we were talking about two different bump-fire devices and he thought we meant bump-fire and full.”

They just stopped talking about it.

Then they just stopped talking.

Well, why not, when you have powerful senators and congresscritters who need a lawful accessory to demonize in the interest of creating a gun control slippery slope?

Was one (or more) of the shooter’s weapon fully automatic? Personally, I thought at least one recorded burst sounded so regular (as opposed to other stuttering bursts) that I took it for full-auto fire.

The shooter had a clean record, so he’d have been eligible to purchase an NFA item. Certainly a multimillionnaire could afford one even at the inflated prices driven by the FOPA of 1986. But if he’d bought one legally, that would be just another example of the law not working as advertised. If he purchased one unlawfully, or converted a semiautomatic to full, well, then he’s just another criminal. Our protectors need something unregulated to… regulate. Gotta get that slippery slope.

So our ancient media mysteries are:

  • Was there one or more fully automatic weapons as reported in multiple outlets?
  • Did inspection of the weapons found in the hotel suite show which had been fired?
  • Has ballistics testing determined which were used to kill and wound the victims?

This is fairly important, really. The Mandalay Bay massacre is being used to justify a whole new set of infringements of human/civil rights, starting with bump-fire. Are they justifying legislation by something that didn’t happen per the script? (Note to nutcases: I’m not saying the incident was staged/faked; I’m questioning which weapon(s) was used.)

But shooters — aside from a few Mom’s Basement Army keyboard commandos and mall ninjas — consider bump-fire stocks to be nothing more than fun ammo-wasters. Granted, I can’t really wrap my head around mass murder, but it seems to me that if I were a wealthy guy intent on the murder of as many people as possible in ten minutes, and I had one or more automatic weapons handy, I don’t think I’d look over the selection and say, “Nah, the toy is the better tool for the job.”

I might transition to a bump-fired weapon if everything else jammed or broke, but who would start with that?

The cable news attention span has expired, so we may never learn the answers to my questions.

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And Then

Today I was listening to the radio while I was driving. One of the topics was the attack on Sen. Rand Paul. The host discussed when it first happened the mainstream media (#FakeNews) more or less laughed it off. The assailant IS a Doctor at Bowling Green hospital, man they must be hurting for staff there, don’t think I’d go there regardless of the reason. Then the media said it was over “grass clippings” “landscaping”, apparently the statement given by the assailant’s lawyer. But then a spokesman for Sen. Paul released a tweet (love how there are ways to get around the msm) that made a few people begin to question the excuse given. Breitbart and I believe, the Washington Examiner actually did this old-fashioned thing called “journalism”. They didn’t accept the lawyers word, they went and talked to the neighbors. All of whom said the Pauls were wonderful neighbors, kept their place immaculate, and unlike everyone else who has a lawn care service, Sen. Paul does his own. The “doctor” who is the inventor of a QVC product in 2005. The neighbors reached out to Breitbart because what they were reading in the msm was so wrong. The media reported it as “minor injuries”. The man has six broken ribs and a pleural effusion. Check out the x-ray picture! Minor my ….. foot. The media did everything it could to cover for the liberal Bernie supporter and conservative hating “doctor” and QVC maven.

But this is not the first legislator attacked by a supporter of the communist Bernie Sanders. No, Republican Representative Steve Scalise was shot along with four others before a good guy with a gun, the Capitol police, showed up to end it.

In fact, a lot of the shootings have actually been the peaceful, tolerant, liberal left.

But it seems in the left has stepped up their game in terms of shooting people. Now they have decided riots are a form of free speech.

For instance Charlottesville, to protest, um, why exactly? Some naughty words in this.

Attacking someone physically that believes differently than you do is perfectly acceptable. Remember what I said about the media covering for Sen. Paul’s attacker, and what Paul Joseph Watson said about how the media reported the “peaceful protests”.

And let’s say, what if the police, or campus security were told to stand down, not to help those being attacked. And some of the campus security were ticked, they were told by the college STAFF that everything was “ok”. Sounds like University of Missouri. Who now rents the empty dorm rooms to the 5 people that come to the football games.

If you live in a blue area, I’m sure this makes you really anxious for the next patriotic event, parade or speech perhaps, by someone you would like to hear. Except that to the thugs, many of them Soros funded, free speech only applies to them.

College campuses a safe space? Only the liberals are safe on college campuses. If you are conservative, or want to hear a conservative, not so much “safe space”.

A conservative, gay, Jewish speaker Milo was suppose to speak at Berkeley, yes, this is old news, but it’s going somewhere.

Milo is gay, normally not a group attacked by the left. Milo is Jewish, in the past, not a group attacked by the left. But Milo is a conservative, and no matter what else he is, it means he has no right to say things that college students don’t want to hear and expose them to thoughts they’ve never heard in class except to hear them derided.

And this is going somewhere. Here. Hate Spaces on American campuses

This documentary portrays a horrific picture of anti-Semitism at a number of American campuses. Much takes the form of extreme anti-Israelism, yet also manifestations of intense hatred toward Jews are shown. Under the cover of the First Amendment of the US constitution, which does not permit limitation of free speech, far-reaching hate mongering against Jews and Israel is carried out and considered protected speech. In the American contemporary academic reality this movie can only be called contrarian.

…….

Another question is why has the Department of Education failed to intervene against this ongoing bigotry? Why has it not systematically investigated the breach of academic integrity by biased teachers at institutions of higher learning. Is it not a national interest that university administrations have a moral compass? All this is not only a Jewish issue but also one which indicates that there is a great deal wrong with the American university system.

Protected speech policies allow extreme hatred. Politically correct administrators and professors teaching one-sided biased views reflect academic degeneration. The probability that there is much more wrong on campuses beyond biased teaching and anti-Semitic hate speech is high. This is the more important issue because some students infected by their teachers may eventually come to hold senior positions in the country.

A mob of people going after people that they don’t like. They don’t agree with how they think, and they’ve been told by the media that those people aren’t really even human. So you don’t have to treat them as such. They’re vile, they’re deplorable. What happens when you have large groups of people that think that way? They believe it’s ok to attack? Because we have that now….And then

Today is November 9th. The anniversary of the start of Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht
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