Recommended Reading

Oleg Volk has shared a column written by a friend. I think it is important enough to share now, rather than waiting to include it in next week’s newsletter.

AMENDMENT TWO: A LEGAL IMMIGRANT’S CAUTIONARY TALE by Anonymous
I am a proud American, an unhyphenated American. I am the most fortunate type of American, one who has won life’s lottery by escaping communism. My family endured persecution, physical risk, and constant intimidation by the secret police to legally enter the United States.

I am proudly writing this in English, because mastering English opened opportunities that would have been denied to me had I chosen to limit myself to my native language and culture.

What does this have to do with the Second Amendment? I am telling you about my past because I want you to understand who I am. I want you to understand the source of my passion.

The fruits of tyranny are not an abstract topic for me.

I am going to use words like political correctness, slavery, communism, and dystopia and I want you to understand the full measure of my meaning.

I want you to understand why I take my rights and responsibilities as a gun owner so seriously.
[Read the entire column]

I don’t know who the author is, but over the years I’ve worked with people, who escaped the Soviet Bloc, who could have written just this.

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We Otto Know

This is another one of those columns where I tie shoestrings. Two things going on at the same time that are related, at least in my mind. The things are a TV program and a law.

First up, the TV show was called nazi Secret Files and the episode involved Otto Skorzeny. Skorzeny was hitler’s favorite commando. He led the rescue of mussolini, bravely kidnapped a child, and was a good nazi, he hated Jews. None of this is news, what the show focused on was his activities after the war.

At the beginning of the 20th century 1 million Jews lived peacefully in North Africa and the Middle East. They were mainly the Sephardic Jews. After Germany’s defeat in WWI and hitler’s rise to power Jews began to flee Europistan for Palestine. In the 1930s 250,000 European Jews fled Europe for Palestine. At that time Germany let them go, they wanted them to leave. In 1917 the British Empire had issued the Balfour Declaration, they saw it as restoring the land back to the Jews.

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

At that time the land was under the control of the local Falest Pales Ara Turks. Yup, no one local controlled the land, Turkey did.

So the local arabs began to express their displeasure, they didn’t don the powerful pink knitted hat, nope, they went the antifa terrorist route and began to attack and sabotage. Stirring the pot was Haj Amin al-Husseini. It seems the British just couldn’t keep from shooting themselves and the Jews in the feet and any other handy place, they appointed al-Husseini as Grand Mufti after he promised he’d be good and quit inciting bloody attacks and riots on the Jews like he had in 1920 and 1921. Of course he lied and there were horrid riots in 1929 and 1936. Since al- Husseini hated the British as well as Jews, they really, really should have known better. Alas. He looked pretty much like your typical arab, blue eyed, fair complexion and it was said he could be charismatic and charming. Obviously, the Brits didn’t catch on. What al- Husseini did was change the focus of the conflict in the middle east from political to religious. From 1936-1939 he convinced 5,000 arabs that it would be a great idea to get themselves killed trying to prevent the Jews from settling. Now this is important, if you follow events in Israel, it will sound familiar, very familiar. He convinced local gullible arabs that the Jews were trying to destroy islam. Today the imams, hamass and abu mazen says that they Jews are going to destroy the Alka-Seltzer Mollusk, but it’s the same tired approach, and they’ve yet to catch on. It may surprise you to know, that back then the majority of the arabs wanted to make peace with Israel. They viewed al-Husseini as radical and didn’t want that path. They wanted to live in peace with the new Jews like they had the Jews that already lived there and just get on with their lives. Interesting, yes?

So fair haired, blue-eyed, Jew hating al-Husseini, who would love a guy like that? Yep, on November 28th of 1941 he goes to meet hitler in Germany. However, hitler is less than besotted and turns him over to himmler since he was never really sure about al-Husseini’s genetic make up. Of course a life long friendship begins between himmler and al-Husseini, and they both loved islam. Seriously, they saw Christianity and Judaism as the religion of slaves and islam as the religion of warriors. Hey dipwads, you never heard of King David? Judah Macabee? But I digress, so the new BFFs form islamic nazi SS units in Bosnia with 26,000 men. Indeed one of the largest. al-Husseini becomes a General, gets money and houses and with the similarities between nazism and islam they all get on peachy. Joseph Gerbils even gets in on the act because he sees the muslims as being important to use against Britain. The mufti tours the concentration camps and decides to bring them to Israel. He wants the mobile gas chambers like the kind used by Walter Rauff who followed Rommel around. He was hoping he could get Eichmann to help him set up the camps.

Does any of this give you the idea that there was far more to al-Husseini’s hatred that just some Jews moving to Israel?

This hatred is what led to the assassination of King Abdullah I of Jordan (established in 1948). Not all the arabs wanted war with Israel, King Abdullah wanted to make peace, and was killed for it.

Back to Skorzeny, before the end of the war, Skorzeny had come up with a plan that could extend the action against the allies for up to another year possibly. He began the group known as the werwolves. They were made up of mostly hitler youth because they were available, but like many modern school children, also easy to indoctrinate. Their goal was to work as a partisan unit, disrupt, destroy and kill. I don’t know how effective they really were at that as much as Joseph Gerbils used them to great effect by propaganda broadcasts urging German civilians to join in. The army reacted by warning service men and putting in place curfews on the German population.

“Every friendly German civilian is a disguised soldier of hate. Armed with the inner conviction that the Germans are still superior … [they believe] that one day it will be their destiny to destroy you. Their hatred and their anger … are deeply buried in their blood. A smile is their weapon by which to disarm you … In heart, body and spirit every German is Hitler.”

Eventually Skorzeny sees the writing on the wall and turns himself in to the Americans. In July of 1948 he is sprung from custody by some of his werwolves disguised as American soldiers. He has helped many of the nazi high officials flee via the Ratlines and now he is ready to move, and so he does.

So there is some background.

It’s now 1953 and Skorzeny shows up in Egypt to reunite with the arab fuhrer as al-Husseini was called. So what’s an out of work nazi to do? He begins setting up arab werwolves. He teaches terrorism to the arabs. One would have thought they already knew enough about that. He meets a cousin of al-Husseini named yasser arafat who went on to form the ancient people known as falestinians in 1964. I believe I read that he stated in his biography he came up with the term “Palestinians” as applying to arabs as a propaganda type tool. Knowing he and Skorzeny were BFFs for the rest of their lives I just wonder where he could have gotten such a propaganda idea. After the War for Independence in 1948 the arabs had conducted raids on Israeli farms, stole livestock and farm equipment, mostly. After 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power and ousted the British from Egypt. Gamal was a hitler fan-boy. So with Skozeny training the arab werwolves the raids changed, now they became vicious towards the Jews. The nazis had their foothold. They viewed civilian trains, buses, markets as fair game. He trained the fedayeen to kill Jews in Gaza, Judea and Shomron. 260 Israelis were killed in 1955 alone. It might interest you to know that Skorzeny was also involved in training young neo-nazis in the United States. By 1960 Nasser had set Egypt up as a nazi state in the mid-east. He had his opposition killed and 75,000 Egyptian Jews had either fled, been expelled or killed. Now that everything is set up, Skorzeny moves to Spain and forms a terrorist for hire group called “The Paladin Group”. His clients included Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, both admirers of the nazis.

In the 1960s and the 1970s the terror really kicked up in the mid-east with the proliferation of non state terror organizations. The fedayeen, hamass, hezbollah, jemaah islamiyah, al-qaeda all of these originated from Skorzeny’s werwolves and his training back in Egypt in the 50s. Mein Kampf is still a best seller in the arabic world, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are thought to be true as well.

So now you know how some of the terrorism and propaganda in the mid-east had nazi origins. Now for part 2, it’s shorter.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the new Nation state law recently passed by Israel. Much of the world has weighed in on it. Racist, establishing apartheid, discrimination, democracy is dead. The arabs are all in a tizzy, the left wing Jews are having a hissy, actually left wing everything pretty much always has a hissy when Israelis do anything other than die quietly. But just in the interest of letting you form your own opinion, here is the new Israel Nation State Law, in it’s entirety.

1. The State of Israel

a) Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people in which the state of Israel was established.

b) The state of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, in which it actualizes its natural, religious, and historical right for self-determination.

c) The actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

2. National symbols of the State of Israel

a) The name of the state is Israel.

b) The flag of the state is white, two blue stripes near the edges, and a blue Star of David in the center.

c) The symbol of the state is the Menorah with seven branches, olive leaves on each side, and the word Israel at the bottom.

d) The national anthem of the state is “Hatikvah”

e) [Further] details concerning the issue of state symbols will be determined by law.

3. [The] unified and complete [city of] Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

4. The Language of the State of Israel

a) Hebrew is the language of the state.

b) The Arabic language has a special status in the state; the regulation of the Arab language in state institutions or when facing them will be regulated by law.

c) This clause does not change the status given to the Arabic language before the basic law was created.

5. The state will be open to Jewish immigration and to the gathering of the exiled.

6. The Diaspora

a) The state will labor to ensure the safety of sons of the Jewish people and its citizens who are in trouble and captivity due to their Jewishness or their citizenship.

b) The state will act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious legacy of the Jewish people among the Jewish diaspora.

7. The state views Jewish settlement as a national value and will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.

8. The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the secular calendar will serve as an official calendar. The usage of the Hebrew calendar and of the secular calendar will be determined by law.

9. National Holidays

a) Independence Day is the official holiday of the state.

b) The Memorial Day for those who fell in the wars of Israel and the Memorial Day for the Holocaust and heroism are official memorial days of the state.

10. Saturday and the Jewish Holidays are the official days of rest in the state. Those who are not Jewish have the right to honor their days of rest and their holidays. Details concerning these matters will be determined by law.

11. This Basic Law may not be altered except by a Basic Law that gained the approval of the majority of the Knesset members.

And that’s it. All of it. For some good commentary check out IsraellyCool. He has a professor of law analyze it.

And yes, Skorzeny did help the Mossad find information on the rockets being built in Egypt by German scientists. Some wondered what his motivation was. They wondered if on some level he wanted to atone.

“How can I trust you?” Skorzeny asked. “How can I be sure that you won’t go after me later?” He feared that Israeli avengers would find him as they found Eichmann, and his fate would be the same.

Rafi Eitan found the solution right away. “We are authorized to offer you freedom from fear,” he said. He took a sheet of paper and wrote Skorzeny a letter, in the name of the State of Israel, which guaranteed him “freedom from fear” and assured him that he would not be subject to any kind of persecution or violence.

Skorzeny perused the document, then fell silent. He got up and paced back and forth, immersed in thought.

He finally turned to the Israelis. “I agree,” he said.

Nope, self-serving till the end. He may be gone, his filthy legacy lives on.

That’s it, and now you know where the genesis of much of that hatred and misinformation is coming from. The roots of the lies and tactics go back to nazi Germany. And somewhere hitler, Skorzeny and al-Husseini are smiling as the world attempts to deny the Jewish state the right to be, a Jewish State and screams “disproportionate force” as Jews die there still fighting for their right to be a Jewish State.

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Redefining “firearm”. Again.

An interesting legal theory.

Academy sporting goods chain sued by couple wounded in Sutherland Springs church shooting
On Friday, Rosanne Solis and Joaquin Ramirez sued Academy Sports + Outdoors for selling Devin Patrick Kelley a Ruger AR-556 with 30 round capacity magazines. While this model is legal in Texas, Kelley was a resident of Colorado, where it’s illegal to sell, possess or manufacture magazines with capacities over 15 rounds.
[…]
Emily Taylor, a gun law expert in San Antonio, said she believes Solis and Ramirez have a case. Federal law prohibits licensed gun dealers from selling to residents of other states unless the buyer meets them in person and the sale “fully” complies “with the legal conditions of sale in both such States.”

IANAL, yada yada…

Not quite, Taylor. Federal law prohibits licensed gun dealers from selling firearms to residents of other states, with exceptions.

18 U.S. Code § 922(b) It shall be unlawful for any licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector to sell or deliver—
3) any firearm to any person who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not reside in (or if the person is a corporation or other business entity, does not maintain a place of business in) the State in which the licensee’s place of business is located, except that this paragraph (A) shall not apply to the sale or delivery of any rifle or shotgun to a resident of a State other than a State in which the licensee’s place of business is located if the transferee meets in person with the transferor to accomplish the transfer, and the sale, delivery, and receipt fully comply with the legal conditions of sale in both such States (and any licensed manufacturer, importer or dealer shall be presumed, for purposes of this subparagraph, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to have had actual knowledge of the State laws and published ordinances of both States), and (B) shall not apply to the loan or rental of a firearm to any person for temporary use for lawful sporting purposes;

And “firearm”? “Rifle”?

26 U.S. Code § 5845Firearm
The term “firearm” means (1) a shotgun having a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (2) a weapon made from a shotgun if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (3) a rifle having a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length; (4) a weapon made from a rifle if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length; (5) any other weapon, as defined in subsection (e); (6) a machinegun; (7) any silencer (as defined in section 921 of title 18, United States Code); and (8) a destructive device. The term “firearm” shall not include an antique firearm or any device (other than a machinegun or destructive device) which, although designed as a weapon, the Secretary finds by reason of the date of its manufacture, value, design, and other characteristics is primarily a collector’s item and is not likely to be used as a weapon.

No mention of magazines in federal law there.

(c) Rifle
The term “rifle” means a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of the explosive in a fixed cartridge to fire only a single projectile through a rifled bore for each single pull of the trigger, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire a fixed cartridge.

Nor there.

As best I understand the laws, federal restrictions are not on magazines; just firearms. Dealers in other states aren’t responsible for complying with Colorado laws on non-firearms. For this case to fly, Solis and Ramirez will have to convince the jury that a magazine is a rifle component that — just as a drop-in auto sear is a “machinegun” — constitutes a firearm in its own right.

If I were on the jury, they would have to come up with a remarkably persuasive argument to convince me of that. Personally, I think the DIAS=machinegun bit is ridiculous, but at least it’s codified in law. Magazine=firearm is not.

But gun controllers would love it, as such a ruling would make magazines into firearms, subject to all the licensing for manufacture and sale, and background checks by FFLs.

Serial numbers. Bound book entries. Inspections.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/5845
And, if magazines are guns, what of the existing millions of unserialized commercially sold magazines?


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Horses, cats, and ships

I’ve noted before that 3D-printed plastic guns are impractical.

So why the emphasis on stopping them?

To suppress the technology

The Darkly Twisted Logic Behind The NRA’s Support For 3D-Printed Guns
“You go down six months, two years, five years, when these things do start to appear, and then they sort of shrug their shoulders and say you can’t regulate these things, the horse is out of the barn,” said Spitzer. “The public policy question is are these worthy of regulation or even prohibition or restriction in the first place, and if they are, what better time to do it than before they become widely in circulation?”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nra-3d-printed-guns-gun-control_us_5b633bcce4b0fd5c73d762b2

The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left, the barn, that ship sailed, [insert your favored metaphor].

People have been hand-making gun for centuries. 3D printing does make it easier for the unskilled to start from scratch. But you know what? There’s another grand invention that already did that.

Pipe.

Once you could go down to the hardware store and pick up iron pipe in various sizes, anybody could make a gun. And a lot of people did. And do.

Shall we ban indoor plumbing? If it saves just one life?


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.


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Ghost Stats

I need a little help. I’m attempting to put together data on criminal firearms use. I need data on the criminal use of unlicensed, individually manufactured firearms: i.e.- zip guns, firearms home-built from 80% receivers, 3D-printed firearms, and the like. This would exclude licensed manufacture of firearms whose serial numbers were obliterated.

I’ve spent a couple of days searching for reports, papers, news stories… pretty much anything. I can find no collated data on such use. My usual search-fu has failed me.

I do find news opinion propaganda pieces in which some police officer or other official makes a blanket — yet somehow undocumented — claim that such weapons are turning up at crime scenes more and more often. I want data on that.

What I have found is three reports of firearm, home-built from 80% receivers, used in killings in the past five years (Zawahri, 2013; Bertics, 2015; Neal, 2017). I expected more. (Unsurprisingly, all were in gun-controlled California).

I also found two reports of people making and selling such unserialized firearms… to undercover agents. Again, both cases in California; go figure.

I have not found a single report of a 3D-printed firearm — plastic or metallic — being used in crime. There were four “firearms” reportedly found by TSA in carry-on baggage; one an object that even the TSA referred to only as a “replica,” and three AR lowers, of which at least one resulted in no charges, but was voluntarily abandoned, leading me to suspect it was still an 80%. The report on the other two did not mention charges one way or the other; none of the lowers were pictured.

The lack of 3D-printed firearm in crime doesn’t surprise me, but I expected to see more 80%-based gear, and even the occasional zip gun.

If anyone can point me to collected data on criminal use (mostly use in crime beyond the offense of making/selling, but that, too), I would greatly appreciate it.

Otherwise, I’m going to have to go the FOIA route with the ATF, and that’s going to take money I don’t have (see PayPal link below, if you’d like to help that way). And likely a lot of time. Surely, someone has researched this before.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.

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Judicial Overreach: The Internet Strikes Back

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik,in Washington state, issued a temporary injunction against Texas-based DefDist barring them from releasing hobbyist computer code files. Somehow, the ruling by one district judge is allegedly binding on the entire country.

The Internet, thanks to Code Is Free Speech, struck back.

Firearm-Related Speech, Machining Instructions, Codes Published by Civil Rights Organizations, Activists at New CodeIsFreeSpeech.com Website
SACRAMENTO, CA (July 31, 2018) — Tonight, the organizations and individuals behind CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, a new Web site for the publication and sharing of firearm-related speech, including machine code, have issued the following statement:

Our Constitution’s First Amendment secures the right of all people to engage in truthful speech, including by sharing information contained in books, paintings, and files. Indeed, freedom of speech is a bedrock principle of our United States and a cornerstone of our democratic Republic. Through CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, we intend to encourage people to consider new and different aspects of our nation’s marketplace of ideas – even if some government officials disagree with our views or dislike our content – because information is code, code is free speech, and free speech is freedom.

Should any tyrants wish to chill or infringe the rights of the People, we would welcome the opportunity to defend freedom whenever, wherever, and however necessary. Hand-waving and hyperbole are not compelling government interests and censorship is not proper tailoring under the law.

[READ MORE]

The plaintively-whining pisswit plaintiffs allege no standing. They can present no case of a crime committed with a 3D-printed hobbyist experiment. They don’t explain why lawfully printing a gun is worse than lawfully assembling a zipgun from Lowes-supplied pipe. They do — falsely — claim that such a home-built firearm is “undetectable;” the law has been clear on that for decades: firearms must incorporate a minimum mass of metal to render them detectable by by X-ray and metal detectors. It doesn’t matter if the firearm is machined by a big corporation, screwed together from pipes by a gangbanger, or printed by a law-abiding home hobbyist.

People have been hand-making firearms for nearly a millennium (commercial mass-production of firearms is a relatively new phenomenon), from materials far more appropriate to the pressures and stresses of a firearm than plastic.

Automated additive and subtractive manufacturing has been around for decades.

Plastic has been a structural element of firearms for decades.

Only now, has it become a “problem.” Because now individual have access to the technology. Not just the licensed, regulated, tracked, inspected, harassed commercial builders.

Very few — apparently none — street thugs are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a 3D printer, more on filament, download CAD files, download more software to convert .SLDPRT files to .STL, run the conversion, and spend hours or days printing a large, bulky, poorly concealable .380 with which to rob his drug dealer. Stealing a gun or buying a gun on the black market is faster, cheaper, and gets them more effective tools of crime. That’s not what has the authoritarian goons worried.

They are afraid of the law-abiding people, who are getting a little tired of laws with no discernible relation to the constitution; honest folks who want protection the cops can’t or won’t provide; good people who might bypass the State’s attempt to render them helpless crime targets (as the criminals already do).

The goons fear arms in the hands of citizens who are tired of their shit. They are so afraid of the people that they are trying to preemptively shut down a new technology before it’s even ready to produce effective arms.

That’s OK. I still have pipe, nails, and wood in the garage.

And the country still has the Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation, The Calguns Foundation, California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, Cody Wilson, and hundreds or thousands of people generating and sharing printer files.



Take the 3D AR Challenge!
3D-print a fully-functional, plastic AR-15, and successfully demonstrate it. The first person to do so will win 10 rounds of equally functional, 100% plastic 3D-printed .223 Remington ammunition.



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