Just the other day, a friend was telling a few of us about the Prius his son had bought. One acquaintance interrupted to advise him* to tell his son to get rid of it or move out, because the car uses the same power/drive system as an SSBN. and it’s illegal. I told “Al” he should hold off on giving advice like that because he clearly knows nothing about the Prius, which most certainly is not nuclear-powered. “Al” declared that his ignorance of cars and motors doesn’t disqualify him from commenting on car ownership, motor vehicle accidents, or the law.
Should I keep trying to explain to “Al” that giving bad advice based on ignorance can harm other people and make him look like an idiot, or should I just sit back and enjoy the show as he continually makes a fool of himself? It isn’t as if “Al” is really a friend; just a workplace acquaintance.
signed
“Picking the Best Option”
* Update: I see Amy has edited that to delete much of her ignorant display. There is no note — at this time — acknowledging the changes.
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“Can we discuss the loss of rights of people going to a concert because of the lack of assault rifle regulations?”1
Singer Sheryl Crow
“It sickens me the ease in which a TERRORIST can be sold a GUN. Is the ease really worth all these lives?! This needs to stop”2 [capitalization and punctuation in the original] tweeting about Las Vegas.
Gigi Hadid, top fashion model
“It would be wise to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and silencers. None of which is excessive.”3
Elizabeth Banks, Hollywood actress
“Gun control now. Enough already. Grow the f__k up. The average person doesn’t need a f__cking maching (sic) gun. Enough already.”4 [Misspelling in the original]
Billy Eichner, Comedian, actor, writer, television personality.
“We love the traditions, the history, the technology of firearms, and we grew up with the sense of deep responsibility owning guns brings. We gun owners have a deeply held belief in gun safety, instilled by our parents and our grandparents. Owning a gun means living by a set of sternly ingrained rules. Those rules belong to us. We live by them. And when someone breaks those rules, we feel betrayed, appalled, and angry.”5
Todd Woodward
Leftist singer Cheryl Crow, from Kennett, Missouri is worth approximately $41 million dollars. No doubt she and the celebrities cited above earn enough to preclude rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi. They probably have bodyguards as well. Armed bodyguards. If Crow knows anything about firearms and gun-laws, she keeps this secret well hidden. If model Hadid knew the Las Vegas mass murderer was a terrorist (no one else did) then why didn’t she speak up or call the FBI before the massacre? Comedian Eichner demonstrates a psychosis peculiar to those on the left to wit; they believe anger, shouting, and profanity lend credence and strength to their argument. The more self-righteous sanctimony they can work up, like a sweaty lather, the more correct they are. Grow up? For real Billy? I heard that. Someone in the room said, “Who cares. I don’t go to the movies and never heard of these people anyway.” Do you know how many followers they have on social media? Remember this is the USSA (United States of Shallow Americans) wherein if people like an actor, singer, model, or entertainer, then whatever they say must be true. Affection determines truth. Mental exertion need not apply. Let’s play a game. Let’s pretend we’re in a large room and seated at our feet are pop-culture icons all eager to learn. They begin with questions like; aren’t people running amuck in streets blasting each other left and right like in the movies and video games we make? Shouldn’t the government ban guns before they hurt more people? Why is anyone allowed to buy military assault weapons? And they’re all ears and no mouth. I know, I know, but play along anyway.
With respect to actress Elizabeth Banks, there are no firearms classified “assault weapons.” Anything that can be used to hurt another; a rolled up magazine, pencil, ashtray, rock, fishing hook, hayfork, Hillary’s laugh (like a cross between a strangled goose and Bob Dylan singing), or a refrigerator hardened biscuit can be an “assault weapon.” Okay, I get it, you meant “assault rifle” like AR15s, AK47s, Ruger Minis, and any rifle with a collapsible stock and fore-end grip. Right? Wrong. For a rifle to be classified as an “assault rifle,” it must possess specific characteristics including: (1) shoulder fired, (2) capable of full automatic fire, and (3) chambered in a cartridge “intermediate between pistol and revolver, and rifle ammunition; i.e., carbine ammunition.”6 Some are capable of selective fire meaning they have a switch to set them on safe, semiautomatic, fully automatic, and back again. By definition this excludes semiautomatic rifles because there is no switch or capability for full automatic fire. Instead their triggers must be pressed, one at a time, for each round fired, a system more than a century old. Other than caliber, similarities between military and civilian rifles are cosmetic. The latter are incapable of selective or full-automatic fire. Liberals invented the term “assault-weapon” to confuse and scare non- gun owners into believing commercial AR15s are the same as military fully automatic assault rifles.7
Okay, maybe you’re right, a songstress replies, but can’t semiautomatics be modified to fire full-auto? In some cases, yes but it takes skill and proper tools to make alterations which typically are irreversible. This false claim, semiautomatics can easily, and apparently legally, be converted to fully automatic, came up at my school in the form of an ambush.
When I was a high school teacher, a colleague in the foreign language department told her students anyone could purchase the part(s) at gun shows to convert semiautomatic rifles to full-auto. Why this came up in a Spanish class, I have no idea. English, Science, Math, SocialIST Studies, and other departments were compartmentalized into their own hallways and, only in my 3rd year, I’d met few teachers outside my own. Therefore, I was caught off guard when a teacher I’d never met (I had to ask a colleague her name) unleashed an attack on me in the teacher’s break room at lunch. Angry and emotional, she yelled at me in accusatory tones claiming anyone could buy the parts to convert semi into fully automatic firearms at gun shows. Collecting myself, I asked what the part was and how many gun shows had she attended? Her response was tempestuous insistence she spoke the truth and if I said otherwise, I was a liar. Why had she targeted me? An introvert in a department of belligerent very vocal leftists, I’d kept my views to myself from day one so her outburst was mystifying. I failed to grasp, until apprised later by the principal, what an intolerable scandal it was for an overwhelmingly liberal faculty to discover a conservative in their midst. And I was unaware to the degree which liberal teachers, who didn’t even know me, talked about me behind my back. MOTOWN’s The O’JAYS sang of my plight. The pattern was typical. Upon discovering a conservative colleague, liberals begin with mild teasing, then goading, next mockery and stepped up insults, and finally angry verbal attacks. When assigned to work with new teachers during faculty in-services, ultra-liberal union goon Mao ZeTodd was invariably lurking nearby. He’d rush over announcing in hysterical tones resembling an Atlanta CDC warning, I was the “school conservative” thus poisoning any chance to build a relationship before rumor, gossip, and lies reached their ears.
I’d attended many gun shows and never seen parts for sale to convert semi to a fully automatic rifles. Being no authority and wanting to get the facts straight, I contacted the local BATF. They said the Spanish teacher was wrong. Possession of any part permitting conversion of a firearm from semi to full-automatic is illegal and a felony. This is true even if one doesn’t possess a firearm. Members of local police departments and the BATF often visit gun shows ensuring everything is on the up and up. It is illegal to make, alter, or offer for sale, any part modifying the semiautomatic function of any firearm, pistol, shotgun, or rifle, to fully automatic. Kiss loved ones goodbye because you’re looking at up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 dollar fine, and permanent revocation of the right to possess firearms and vote as well. Suppose you make the modification and take it to someone’s farm to try it out. A neighbor reports to authorities hearing automatic fire coming from this property. Based on probable cause the BATF secures and executes a search warrant finding the weapon(s). It gets very bad at that point. Altering firearms this way is something you should never have anything to do with. Don’t do it. Run from anyone doing this.8 Did I confront the Spanish teacher with the truth, the fact that she lied? No, it’s the whole introvert thing. Okay ask our glitterati, AR15s are not the same as M16s, but why does anyone need them anyway?
The right to keep and bear arms is recognized through the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as a G-d-given not man-created right from which individuals can’t be alienated [separated] by government. It has nothing to do with hunting or membership in the Military or “National” (sic) Guard and more importantly, is not dependent on notions of a “need.” Were this not so, those who rule, regardless of style of government from authoritarian to democratic, could define and redefine the “need” standard until it becomes an un-scalable wall. In response to mass shootings in the latter half of the 20th century, Britain eliminated self-defense as a reason to “need” firearms essentially banning pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. Because registration had been implemented years before, the government knew who had what when confiscation began.9 An inalienable right cannot be altered, infringed upon, or abolished by a majority vote of one’s neighbors or by government. Okay, says a pop-star, instead of banning guns, couldn’t we save lives by limiting magazine capacity? Who really needs “high capacity” magazines holding 15 to 30 rounds?
High compared to what? The correct term is “full capacity.” I have a question for you; how many rounds does it take to stop an attacker? A 2008 Rand Corporation study found the NYPD averaged an 18% hit rate in shootouts with armed criminals and a 30% rate when the bad guys didn’t return fire10 translating into an approximate hit ratio of 1 to 3 rounds per 10 round magazine. Roughly the same percentage, sometimes worse, holds true for departments across America. Would you limit magazine capacity for the police? Okay maybe not cops but it’s different with civilians. It’s the cops that face armed bad guys a movie star shouts. Based on my experience, more than a few civilians are better trained and know their way around firearms than the average cop. Considering victims, by virtue of their status as the intended target, are first on the scene, why should they be hamstrung by limited capacity magazines when police, on the way if 911 is called, are not? Now toss into the mix an attacker full of murderous rage, under the influence of alcohol and or drugs, and running full speed at you with knife or gun in hand. Forget all this talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight, one-shot stops, and knock-down power, we’re dealing with the real world, not Hollywood. Lethal hits or not, how many rounds will it take to stop the attacker from taking your life before he expires? No one knows. Further, criminals may attack in pairs or groups, one asking for the time or bus fare, distracting the intended victim. Will felons, already barred from possessing the firearms they acquire, obey magazine capacity limits? They tend to keep shooting until their victims are dead.
I see your hand up in the front. Didn’t you sing at a Super Bowl halftime a few years back? Never saw a skirt so short before. What about gun registration to prevent violent crimes, she says, ignoring my observation. Wouldn’t it keep them out of the hands of criminals? Does it now, I reply. Registration is record keeping on who legally purchased and owns what. Since criminals, who typically obtain firearms through theft and burglary are disinclined to register them, what difference would registration make? Consider automobile registration and driver’s licensing requirements. License plates on stolen cars reveal who owns not who stole it. Same with guns. Like firearms, many laws regulate the purchase and operation of automobiles but here the analogy breaks down. Fines, restrictions on and revocation of driving privileges, and even prison to compel compliance with traffic laws has failed. People still text, speed, run stop signs and red lights, steer wheels with knees because a cigarette is in one hand and a triple-decker two-pound bacon burger is in the other, and drive under the influence. Each year they murder thousands of people and hurt, maim, and cripple millions more yet no one calls for the elimination of automobiles even “if it will save one life.” There is no analogue with firearm ownership. Considering approximately 124 million people own about 270 million guns,11 and there were 505 deaths due to “accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm” in 2013,12 and of “2,596,993 deaths in the U.S. for the same year, 1% were related to firearms (most suicides),”13 gun owners have a remarkable record for non-criminal safe handling of firearms. This is not the result of registration or gun control laws but rather, the nature of firearm owners going back to America’s founding. Gun registration schemes typically lead to confiscation as in the U.K., Australia, and California. Speaking of California, one of its denizens, not sure if male or female, raises, his, er, her hand, and asks; why not “reasonable” gun laws, can’t you compromise?
Lewis Dovland notes regardless of rhetoric, gun-controller’s “ultimate goal” remains “confiscation of all guns in America.” Each law passed moves closer to this goal. Take same-sex marriage for example and imagine a line forming a continuum running from ‘A’ to ‘Z.’
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Normal marriage is ‘A’ with ‘Z’ being same-sex marriage. Proponents of same-sex marriage knew demanding ‘Z’ was too much to ask for, so they demanded ‘N’ instead. This sparked debate and resistance. Attorneys challenged state laws against same-sex marriage in court while supporters fanned out across the land branding opponents bigots, haters, extremists, and “homophobes.” Schools were pressured to adopt same-sex friendly curriculum under the rubrics; “tolerance” and “diversity.” Hollywood films and television shows seeded positive depictions of same-sex marriage. Stories planted in the liberal media echoed these portrayals. Opponents were depicted as rabid backwoods Christian fundamentalists chomping at the bit to launch new waves of Salem witch trials. Although the demand for ‘N’ appeared a failure, (citizens in states that remember the 10th Amendment still voted on the issue) in actuality proponents of same-sex “marriage” (sic) achieved ‘C,’ greater acceptance of and crumbling resistance to their agenda. The effort began anew only now, ‘C,’ is the new ‘A’ and there is no way to go back to the original ‘A.’ ‘N’ is again demanded and ‘C’ is again settled for but ‘C’ is now really ‘F.’ By constantly refining ‘A’ toward ‘Z,’ they ultimately got to ‘Z.’ In like manner, Confiscationists through so-called reasonable gun laws, hope to eliminate private possession of firearms in America.14
Gun control laws are predicated on the notion mere existence of firearms increases if not causes violent crime. The solution? Remove firearms from the equation and the problem is solved. This is why Confiscationists focus entirely on the means, i.e. guns, magazines, ammunition, and never on the criminal. But this notion has proven to be terribly flawed to the point of being false by criminologists and researchers from Gary Keck, David Kopel, Joyce Lee Malcom, to John R. Lott, Jr. If it was valid, in states and cities where obtaining firearms is almost impossible for the law-abiding, it would be even more so for criminals causing them to abandon their lives of crime becoming carpenters, waitresses, farmers, teachers, plumbers, nurses, and doctors. But this is not the case. Evil in the heart of malefactors causes evil deeds. Tools to implement evil will be found one way or another. As a policeman I transported criminals to court, jail, and prison. Recognizing some as return customers, I asked, why not turn away from their life of crime? Answer; it’s what they knew and what they liked. None sweated getting their hands on guns either. Fences (who trade in stolen property) and other criminals sell them or they could be acquired on the job during thefts and burglaries. Gun laws play no role in their calculations. “Reasonable” gun laws do nothing to transform wolves but instead, disarm the lambs. One cannot escape the fact that no greater deterrent to criminal assault and mass shootings exists than a public at large possessed of and trained in arms.
88 Students told me what the Spanish teacher said. Some kids bragged in my class knowing someone’s dad or dad’s friend who was altering semiautomatic rifles to fire full-automatic. I told the class in no uncertain terms this was illegal, a felony, and the consequences when they were caught.
99 David B. Kopel, The Samurai, The Mountie, And The Cowboy (Buffalo, New York, Prometheus Books, 1992), 70-95
1010 Nate Rawlings, “Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders, Time, at http://nation.time.com/2013/09/16/ready-fire-aim-the-science-behind-police-shooting-bystanders/ A New York Times study put the NYPD officer’s hit rate as high as 34%. See Al Baker, “11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail,” New York Times, at http://www.newyorktimes.com. While I was at the Santa Clara PD range for annual qualification, our [not Santa Clara] new Chief walked in. The Range master said although I’d been waiting an hour, to let him go first. Later he told me the Chief showed up with revolver rounds in his shirt pocket, two different calibers, none matching his gun. I asked if the Chief had passed qualification. He made a funny face, rolled his eyes, and refused to answer on the basis that it might…
1111 John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns Less Crime, Third Edition, (Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.
If this lawyer lost any gun cases, his clients may have grounds for appeal due to ineffective counsel. I just hope he didn’t convince a client to cop a plea to unlawful possession of paper weights.
It started with this news report.
Indiana teen built ‘ghost gun’ from online parts
In February a 17-year-old boy in Evansville, Indiana, went onto the website of Columbia-based firearms manufacturer MidwayUSA and spent $235.37 on parts making up 80 percent of a Glock 17 pistol.
It’s the usual Ooooh! Scary ghost guns BS. Pretty clearly the reporter doesn’t know the difference between an unfinished 80% receiver and a finished-but-unequipped one.It didn’t help that he went to Columbia, MO attorney Stephen Wyse for info.
Under federal law, long-gun unfinished receivers are classified as firearms, said Columbia attorney Steve Wyse. Handgun unfinished receivers are not classified as firearms under federal law, Wyse said.
That’s bad enough, but when I took to Twitter to point out the error things only got worse. Wyse replied.
I actually said that unfinished receivers to machine guns are considered firearms under federal law. The feds consider an AR-15 to be a machine gun
AR-15s are semiautomatic, not machineguns, unless unlawfully modified. And whether intended for a machinegun or not, an unfinished (80% or less) receiver is not considered a firearm; it’s a receiver-shaped paperweight. Compare the two:
An 80% lower.
A paper weight until it’s further milled. It could be milled to be an AR lower, or — assuming you’re properly licensed and doing it for mil/police, and not for civilian use (thanks, VNRA — it could be milled to take an M-16 trigger group. For now, it’s an inert chunk of metal.
A finished AR lower.
This, being by ruling of the ATF is a firearm. Note the lawfully required markings, including serial number.
But Wyse had to double down on the AR-15 = machinegun line.
The federal govt. defines a AR-15 receiver as a “machine gun”. Not my definition and not within my power to change
He’s l… being less than truthful, or he doesn’t understand the difference between an AR-15 (semiautomatic firearm) and the the M-16/M-4 family of assault rifles (select-fire). According to his bio, he’s a Democrat, so it could go either way. Ditto for his possible… confusion over 80% and finished lowers.
It’s a shame reporter Philip Joens didn’t go to an “expert” who actually knows what he’s talking about and/or is honest.
I hope Wyse hasn’t convinced a client to cop a plea for possession of an AR-15 semiauto “machinegun” or 80% lower. As I started, such a client would certainly seem to have grounds for appeal, and should get an opinion from a knowledgeable attorney.
Update, 5/29/2019, 5PM: Mr. Wyse has anticipated the “semi-auto problem” about which The Zelman Partisans have been warning since October 5, 2017. Wyse argues that bump-fire stocks make semiautomatic rifles “easily convertible” to machineguns under the recent BSTD rule.
While the bump-stock-type device rule was finalized (and is being challenged in federal courts), there has been no ruling actually establishing the “semi-auto = machinegun” equivalency. I don’t see any Advance Notice of Proposed Rule-making or NPRM for such a rule.
Yet.
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So adding to the list of who hates Israelis, I guess we can add…..Israel? For those that don’t know, the Falestinian Authority headed by Abu Mazen, one of the planners and financiers of the Munich Massacre is getting armored vehicles. And how is this happening? Well, they were donated by the European Union. And the Falestinian Authority (FA) has been demanding them. In the past Israel had refused to allow them into Judea and Samaria. But now in an effort to offset the arab hissy fit at Israel’s cutting the amount of money they give the FA every month Israel is giving in and allowing the FA their armored vehicles. This is a phenomenally bad idea.
The last time PA armored vehicles aroused controversy was in 2000 when a paper published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research identified the PA armored threat to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, saying “Because the IDF limits yishuv self defense to small arms, the growing armor vehicle capability of the PA would render the assault troops it carries invulnerable to yishuv defenders. The IDF gate guards do not have anything to stop these vehicles. The standard sliding gates for all yishuvim would buckle under the impact of such armored vehicles, and many yishuvim lack even this ‘obstacle’ – such that the only thing separating between the attacker and the yishuv is a moving aluminum arm painted red and white.”
The report went on to say that “The PA armored vehicle force is not capable of challenging the IDF, but would be unstoppable in a first strike on yishuvim. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that that is their purpose.
“Although it is possible to gain sudden entry into yishuvim by using commandos or even less prepared troops – as the examples of Ariel and Ofra show – armored vehicles provide a rapid capability to do so that ground troops cannot match.” The report can be seen in the original Hebrew here.
At that time, the IDF justified PA armored vehicles according to Oslo saying Arafat needed them to protect his government from Arab extremist elements, while at the same time trying to deny their existence.
The tax money was cut to the FA because the FA uses it to pay terrorists to kill Jews. So Israel was paying the murderers, the FA is just the middle man. So the FA is throwing a hissy fit by refusing to take any of the tax money. Ok. I can’t believe Israel gives them money anyway. It’s like installing metal detectors for the arabs on The Temple Mount. Everyone else already had to go through metal detectors. But after arabs killed Israeli policemen on the Temple Mount and Israel installed metal detectors the arabs pitched a hissy fit, refused to return to the Temple Mount and PM Netanyahu took them down. What a shame, I hear it was great for a few days on The Temple Mount, no screaming harridans.
But this latest decision will leave Israeli citizens at a decided disadvantage in terms of defending themselves. Small arms against armored vehicles while they wait for the IDF to arrive? Nonsense! Stupidity!
I have a solution. Going back in Israel’s history there was another time when Jews were denied the most effective self defense tools. This isn’t the first time a government has deprived Jews of effective tools to defend themselves while arming the enemy. It’s just the last time it wasn’t their own government. It was Britain with the “White Paper” of 1939. It remained if effect until 1948. The white paper limited Jewish immigration into Israel at a time when Jews most needed to flee Europe, before it became Europistan. Why? Because it would upset the delicate arab sensibilities. Perhaps tlaib’s kindly grandmother hadn’t explained things to the other arabs yet, this was before 1964 when the arabs suddenly and auto-magically became Falestians. And the British most definitely limited weapons access to only the arabs. Jews were suppose to rely on the British government to keep them self. Which worked out horribly.
And thus began the Jewish effort to protect the new Jewish residents in Israel. There were three different groups, Haganah, Irgun and Lechi.
Here is some basic info on the genesis of the three groups. I’m not crazy about how some of them are described, but it does tell how the came into being.
So when I found out that Israel is arming their enemy arabs against their own Israeli citizens I thought back to pre-state Israel and immediately after statehood was declared. I’m wondering what the towns and villages have to fight back with until the IDF gets there. If all you have is small arms against armored vehicles, well, there must be something better. They need guerrilla tactics.
So I wondered if there were any of the old Davidka mortars hanging around.
Yes, a real Davidka
Availability of weapons and ammunition is critical.
And then I thought about the ship, the Altalena, if you didn’t know it, Altalena was a pseudonym for Zev Jabotinsky. Understand that this ship was bringing weapons and fighters for the impeding fight for Independence, weapons and fighters desperately needed. It also was carrying new immigrants to Israel. Ben-Gurion should be ashamed.
According to the book Altalena by journalist and political analyst Shlomo Nakdimon, Ben-Gurion instructed the Israeli Air Force to sink the ship on the high seas, long before it approached the shore. This would have resulted in much greater loss of life aboard. Gordon Levett, a Mahal volunteer pilot, wrote in his book Flying Under Two Flags that Heiman Shamir Deputy Commander of the Air Force, tried to convince non-Jewish pilot volunteers to attack the ship. However, three pilots refused to participate in the mission, one of them saying, “You can kiss my foot. I did not lose four friends and fly 10,000 miles in order to bomb Jews.”
Why am I telling this old story now? Because I am concerned about the way some Americans, and painfully some Jews, misunderstand the situation in Israel and what occurred there for the last hundred years, and now. Some still blame Israel for the agony there. Some withhold their support because they find lack of perfection in this Jewish State, which is fighting continuously for its survival. Some sit here in judgement on a state and people of which they have little understanding.
When Israel was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, my picture was on the front page of the Sacramento Bee and my family’s participation in the liberation of Israel was told inside, written by a “liberal” Jew. The writer emphasized the suffering of the Palestinians, with little understanding of the suffering of the Israelis. After all, the Israelis are the “strong” ones, therefore the “bad” ones. (Most of the media approach the Arab-Israel problem that way.) The article in the Bee was nicely done, sanitized, the way most Americans want to see this story. Most of us like to have things nicely packaged, refraining from seeing the pictures of true agony in order to continue our lives without too much involvement. Much of this shield was broken on September 11. We started to see the world in truer colors. I hope we can now see the Israeli story also as it really is, and not through the utopian eyes of unrealistic people.
So thinking back to those days of fighting for Independence, and every weapon counting as you faced overwhelming odds and lack of tools I got to wondering, could perhaps the inhabitants of the towns in jeopardy because of the decision, go together and raise the Altalena? Are there enough weapons in functional order?
And this is yet another case of how things can go sideways when only the government has the weapons, or the big guns. They will decide who gets to have them.
In America we have “Duke Nukem” Swalwell, Bear has well documented his stance on using nuclear weapons of American citizens that he later walked back as a “joke”.
So we know that any Demoncratic presidential candidate at this point probably hates Israel, hates or close to hates Jews, at least in comparison to the embrace of the religion of pieces, hates Christians. Is Ilan Omar still on the foreign relations committee today? Hates babies, hates guns, and hates strong confident self-reliant women. And men, they seem to hate ya’ll a lot. Unless of course, you think how they tell you to think. I think they hate G-d, apple pie, America and I bet they even hate George Strait. Sick bunch, not a one of the 4,325 of them running for President don’t have some scheme to confiscate, ban, restrict or in some form or fashion control guns and/or citizens, up to and including the aforementioned nukes.
So Israel is arming the enemy, Duke Nukem and his crew consider us, U.S. the enemy and while I don’t foresee a President Trump allowing a foreign country to come in here and attack citizens in an effort to render us defenseless the same can most certainly not be said of a Clintoon, Fauxcahontas, Bozo, Swalwell, Bernie, Occasional-Cortex or any of the others of that lack of caliber. I could see them happily calling in the UN.
Which makes me very happy that President Trump withdrew the United States from the Arms Trade Treaty.
Then there’s the matter of the Second Amendment. Oh, the treaty’s supporters assure us that the ATT won’t affect our right to own guns. But as Mr. Bromund points out, they also refuse to make that clear in the treaty text. So sure, the treaty (at least as now written) is no gun grab. But gun-control activists could still use it to advance their goals.
And let’s not forget a major flaw in the Arms Trade Treaty, at least if we’re to take it seriously. China and Russia, both of which are major arms exporters, aren’t party of the treaty.
So looking at all this, I’m thinking the Lehi was correct in no compromise, I’m thinking “Oh Herman Wouk, what would you have written about this sorry state of affairs?” A few more days, and he’d have been 104. May his memory be for a blessing. And I’m wondering if we need to finance some orchards and vineyards in Israel, specifically Judea and Samaria.
Apparently she never heard of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988. Yes, 1988; undetectable guns have been unlawful for 31 years. That’s puts her down in the same low IQ bracket as Pennsylvania’s Madeleine Dean who entered a bill to specifically make it illegal to violate the UFA.
26. “UNDETECTABLE” MEANS NOT DETECTABLE BY AN X-RAY MACHINE, PORTABLE PULSED X-RAY GENERATOR, METAL DETECTOR OR MAGNETOMETER WHEN SET AT A STANDARD CALIBRATION, OR ANY OTHER MACHINE USED TO SCREEN OR INSPECT A PERSON AND AN OBJECT FOR A FIREARM, RIFLE, OR SHOTGUN.
The required (by the UFA, and generally if you don’t want your gun to explode) metal will show up on an X-ray.
And should someone 3-D print a plastic item sans metal…
Yes, plastic does show up in X-rays.
At least the NY Dims are wasting their time on this instead of more real infringements.
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“It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.”2
Jeff Snyder
“So long as assault rifles (sic) like the AR15 are legally sold in this state, so long as they are not banned, their threat to civilians will remain in every school, every mall, every movie theater, every nightclub, and in every place the public gathers.”3
Oscar Braynon, State Senate Democrat Leader, Miami Gardens, Florida.
Dressed all in black, including ski mask, he pointed a gun not hesitating to shoot me in the chest. With sounds of screaming, people scrambling to escape, and the gun shot echoing in my ears, I wondered how it had come to this. I had been a police officer trained in dynamic entry,4 hostage negotiation, and firearms but here I was, shot down in a public school. My thoughts drifted back to early morning, 3 November, 2015, where it all began.
Students had the day off but not teachers. High school administrators herded us into the Lecture Hall. What was up? We were being trained to repel attacks by terrorists and active-school “shooters” (sic). Teachers sitting around me, mostly from the English and Math departments, expressed apprehension because none had ever held let alone fired a gun. What did colleagues in my socialIST studies department think? I had no idea. Convicted of being a conservative, I was subjected to the Amish-Shun Syndrome. They sat as far from me as possible. Trainers included city police officers, teachers, and administrators trained in the latest techniques. Considering current policy was assuming the fetal position in classrooms, waiting to be saved or shot, whatever they had in store must be an improvement. Finally this large suburban school district was getting serious about fighting back. Filled with optimism, I scanned the room looking for racks of hangers festooned with body armor, boxes bulging with smoke bombs, tear gas canisters, and flash bang grenades. Maybe there were sign-up sheets for teachers to check out Glock 17s and AR15s. I called dibs on Spikes’ Tactical AR sporting a Crusader on the receiver, the last icon ammonium-nitrate reeking Islamic Jihadi terrorists would see before cashing in on the 72 virgins deal…or is it raisins?5 But I saw none of these.
Presenters not only led off with scare tactics and propaganda, they also used students to spew wanton misinformation. For example, they claimed school shootings were on a marked upswing, getting worse, and our lives were in peril. They displayed graphs and charts mounted on easels to drive the point home. For once, gabby teachers were silent. As the student sock-puppets read off alarming statistics, teacher’s brows furrowed their heads nodding in grim unison. But what the sock-puppets and teacher string-pullers were saying wasn’t even true. It was all lies.6 It stank like a truck load of fish heads spilled on a Los Angeles freeway.
“Facts” presented about the epidemic rise in school shootings came from Everytown for Gun Safety, a faux grassroots gun control organization. It’s the brainchild of and funded by liberal gun confiscationist former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg.7Everytown claimed 74 school shootings had occurred since Sandy Hook, Elementary, in 2012 and this was the basis for the present state of crisis. Everyone assumed the statistic referred only to mass shootings inside schools. No one seemed aware this statistic had been exposed as bogus. Its definition of “school shootings” included “isolated arguments between students [a gun was discharged but the suspect had no intent to shoot anyone] accidents, suicides, and gang activity.” It included every incident in which a gun was discharged, accidental or not, even if no one was struck. And it included shootings occurring near, but not actually on school property, having nothing to do with the school and or its students. Worse, it included gang related shootings in Baltimore and Chicago’s inner cities, with schools nearby, dramatically ratcheting up the statistic.8 If thugs shot it out in an alleyway, or fired at a rival’s homes in a drive by, and a school was in the neighborhood, Everytown counted it as a “school shooting.” But as far as teachers were concerned, based on this statistic, there was an epidemic of “school shootings.” Is it appropriate to harness students to promote a fraud? Appalled, I began telling those around me this information was false, lies. A few looked at me but none responded. No one speaks to those upon whom the principal’s disfavor rests. Why didn’t I take the floor and address this charade of indoctrination and idiocy? Being the victim of a witch hunt (May, 2015) taught me, when they’re looking for witches, they find witches. I was on step three of a three step termination process, for being a conservative in public, and on double-secret permanent probation. As far as I knew, no one had ever been placed on permanent probation before.9 One mistake and I was fired. That pressure, and a heart attack, forced me into retirement that year. I could say nothing.
Training began with presenters passing out black cords resembling fat shoestrings. For the next quarter or an hour, maybe more, we practiced tying knots so complex they’d have given sailors fits. Fire department codes prohibit classroom doors that open inward eliminating the ability to barricade them against intruders. The solution is tying one end of the plump shoestring into a complex knot and attaching the other end to chairs and desks. The idea is, once the attacker(s) shot the lock off the flimsy door, and yanked it open, the cord would drag school furniture along with it blocking entry. Stop laughing, I’m not making this up. Even if this wasn’t an appallingly stupid idea, I wondered how panic stricken teachers would remember let alone be able to tie complex Gordian knots while Jihadis were banging away at them with AK-47s.
Hands shot up. Teachers wanted to know what they were supposed to do if bad guys defeated the knots. A tall young blonde female to my right raised her hand and suggested a solution. When the bad guy pokes his gun through the open door, grab it by the barrel and pull it out of his hands. I stopped breathing. An involuntary response. Shocking. Breathtaking. Unbelievable. Like when the news reported President Ronald Reagan had been shot. I looked around waiting for someone to explain to her why, besides becoming an instant bullet-bag, this was a terrible idea, beyond stupid. To my utter amazement no one did. Instead teachers agreed heartily it was indeed, a good idea. This from teachers who had never held and even loathed guns. My jaw dropped so far open, I was certain colleagues could hear its horrified tendons distend. My life and the lives of your kids are in the hands of shepherds such as these?
But wait, certainly those in authority, those with a modicum of common sense, would speak out against this absurdly dangerous notion of grabbing the barrel of an AK-47 trying to wrestle it away from the bad guy as it’s fired in your face. Right? Considering teachers are responsible for so many lives, this couldn’t’ be more important. Certainly the proverbial “adults in the room,” were obligated to speak up disabusing colleagues of such reckless notions. I looked at the trainers in the front of the room waiting. Some were cops. Good. They would know what to say. They remained silent. This was probably because they were composing the kindest way to tell the teacher her idea was ill advised…and nuts. Instead, several presenters actually agreed with her. Having worn the blue, I stared at the cops in the front psychically imploring them; please, step in and save us from this train wreck. They said nothing. Principals can also destroy SRO jobs.
A student high on insanity, mayhem, meds, and rage, or Islamic Jihadis fueled by violent berserker blood rage, shoves their gun through the door, or bursts into the room blasting anything that moves and twice if it doesn’t, and you’re going to run over and pull the gun from his hands!? Are you kidding me? Could it get any worse?
Hands went up again. Okay, the bad guys defeat the knots, get the door open, and we’re too far away to grab the barrel. Now what? Trainers instructed teachers to repel the attack by rushing the bad guy, throwing books and staplers to distract him, and then wrestle the gun away. Let me see if I understand this. It’s World War I and the French are huddled in trenches awaiting the German assault. Instead of letting artillery and bullets fly as they cross no-man’s land, the French wait until the Boche are upon them and then bean the Krauts with boiled beef and biscuit cans, wrestle their guns away, and kill them. Or, unarmed, rush German machine gun nests, flinging ration cans as they go, and then take the guns from the Huns. I’d call this moronic but, as the saying goes, it’d be an insult to morons. I prayed retirement came before such a tragedy.
Presenters then revealed if an attack occurred and SWAT nailed the scumbag scrote (my words) and we were no longer in any danger, we’d remain under lockdown. No one would be allowed to leave until authorities had searched and cleared every classroom, office, and nook and cranny, one by one. This would take hours. Several teachers asked what to do if students had to go potty. Presenters said, have them pee in a trash can. What about the girls, another teacher asked. Use T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets and hold them up around her, providing a privacy curtain, while she tinkles in the can, came the response.
When did man-hides get turned in for sheep hides? Schools could avail themselves of a voluntary cadre of armed ex-cops and military, and trained citizens. They could open up an irresistible can of whoop-a#% on bad guys taking them out before anyone had to pee in trash cans. I could barely sit still wanting to speak out against this self-inflicted victimhood and cowardice. But, step three of a three step termination process…
Next, in order to be properly trained, completion of role-playing scenarios was required. In addition to the black cords, we were given handfuls of miniature orange whiffle balls. They only had a couple left when they got to me. Teachers were assigned areas in the school where they pretended to be milling about as they would during class passing times. A signal over the PA would announce we were under attack by active “shooter(s)” (sic) and now under lockdown. We were to run to the nearest room, shut and lock the door, employ our newly mastered Houdini-defying knot tying skills, and hide in the dark, maybe peeing on our shoes, until given the all clear.
I wondered, what if the bad guys seized administrators and forced them at gun point to give the all clear? On probation, I said nothing. Once locked in the rooms, police, teacher, and administrator role players, dressed in black including ski-masks, and armed with CO2 paint ball guns, would assault our rooms. If they defeated the knots, they would shoot us. But not to worry, although each gun was loaded with a CO2 canister, there would be no paint ball. We would feel a strong “puff” from the gun. It wouldn’t hurt.
Several young female teachers near me became very emotional, visibly upset. One began to cry in fear. It took presenters several minutes to calm and talk them off the ledge. They were scared. Mortified at being shot by a puff from a paint ball gun? Are you kidding me? This was role playing. Acting. Hadn’t any of them ever played capture the flag, hide and go seek, or at least tag? If they were falling apart over the prospect of being shot by a puff of air from colleague role players, what would they do if confronted by the real deal!
I was assigned to loiter in the lobby of the junior varsity building. It’s an area forming the gaping black mall of the SocialIST Studies Department also known as Mordor. When the alarm blared, everyone stampeded toward my department supervisor’s room. This did not augur well. He called me, and anyone brave or stupid enough to associate with me, the Career Suicide Gang, with me leader for life. He and other teachers warned colleagues, especially rookies, being seen so much as speaking with me was toxic to their careers. I was radioactive and everyone should stay far away from me. This they did. For years. The isolation was so bad, I declared myself a school. I was the principal, teacher, nurse, guidance counselor, custodian, and lunch lady all rolled into one.10 Back to the story.
Everyone made a mad dash for the room. By the time I got there, last, colleagues were trying to Pontius Pilate me, shutting the door in my face. Forcing my way in, I found most teachers were hiding in the office of this former science room, whose door they had shut and locked. The remainder hid in the classroom as the knot-tiers worked their magic. With no place left to hide, I stood along the wall near the door. Defeating the knots and cords, the black-clad shouting role players burst into the room. One pointed a gun at and shot me. For a brief moment I thought I recognized the maniacal blue eyes behind his goggle lenses. Naw, couldn’t be. Was I bothered? No. Running and locking myself in a classroom isn’t what I would have done in the first place. It’s like chickens, fleeing a butcher, running and locking themselves in their coops or, fleeing a monster, a teen girl runs up to the second floor of a house and hides in a closet or under the bed. Instead, taking as many kids as possible, I’d have run down another hallway toward various doors, or up to the second floor, drop down from a window onto the breezeway, and gone. Terrorists shooting to inflict as much carnage as possible will fire into the center mass of stampeding hysterical people. They might notice a few peeling off but the economy of inflicting mass casualties as quickly as possible dictates letting them go. Hide in a room?
I got into trouble at my police academy in California while practicing nighttime vehicle stops. Coppers, role playing as bad guys, were behind the wheels of the cars trainees pulled over. Each time trainees approached the car, asking for drivers’ license and registration, the bad guys got the drop on and disarmed them. Except for me. I’m no former Force Recon Marine, Navy Seal, or a Billy Bad a*%, but every time they pulled a gun on me, I did the same, shooting back. Role players became exercised over my response. The expectation was, anyone with a gun in their face would surrender theirs and, if shot, be dead. I reacted without thinking, looking to escape and evade, fight if I must. Hey, I lived in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Back to the school active “shooter” (sic) training.
I finally learned the purpose of the miniature orange whiffle balls. They simulated the staplers and books we were to throw at bad guys in order to distract them and take away their guns. Oh brother. We ran the drill two more times and each time colleagues slammed the door in my face as if I was a Jehovah’s Witness. With ceremonial hands washed, I was Pontius Pilated each time, gunned down in the hallway. One lesson became immediately clear beyond the inevitable failure of knotted black cords keeping bad guys out of classrooms. Hysterical code red lockdown stampedes for classrooms meant not everyone would make it. Kids, your kids, would be trampled and or abandoned in halls.
Following these melees of madness, teachers reported back to the Lecture Hall for de-briefing. Presenters said, once we in our classrooms, and the doors shut and locked, under no circumstances were we to open them. Teachers asked, suppose a kid, for whatever reason, was slow to get to a classroom and the door already shut and locked. Can we let them in? No. Don’t open it, came the curt reply. A bad guy could be holding a gun to a kid’s head directing him or her,11 to say the coast was clear. An older teacher, whose daughter was in one of my classes, became upset voicing her opposition to this policy. She was certain her daughter, for physical reasons, wouldn’t make it in time. Trainers wouldn’t budge on this policy. I whispered to her that, no matter what, I’d make sure she was safe.
Instead of orange whiffle balls, staplers, and books, wouldn’t it make more sense to arm the appropriately qualified teachers with Glocks? For the idiots who keep lying claiming school districts want to arm “all” teachers, no one ever suggested that. No one. Suggestions have been made to arm those motivated to go through the extensive training in order to qualify. An “informal” poll suggested, out of 200 teachers, maybe 3 or 4 at my school might be willing. But the point is moot. Tremulous districts that teach the best course of action when faced by a grave threat is to curl up in a ball and hide, aren’t about to allow armed teachers, even if in so doing, lives are saved. Political correctness and the liberal’s masculinity drain will not allow it. No one had the moral courage to call out the district’s plan for the hollow feel good sham that it was.
The post Hide and Cower in Place debriefing filled me with equal measures of chagrin and a sense of doom. Teachers, especially those so fearful of the hide-and-go-see game we played, expressed relief saying they felt much better now that we’d been “trained” to fight back. They no longer needed to fear a terrorist/active “shooter” assault on the school. Armed with magical cords, trained to throw books and staplers at bad guys and grab guns away from them, they felt “empowered” to defeat bad guys. Unarmed. I was sick to my stomach. Isn’t it irresponsible, even negligent, to train people for life and death situations with strategies that will get them killed? Isn’t it equally irresponsible filling their heads with an extremely dangerous false sense of security? People who believe they have the answers, don’t search for more. When did Americans, especially men, genetically wired to protect families and the vulnerable against harm, become such Henny Penny’s? When did the idea of fighting back become a notion impossible to consider?
Within a week of training, an assistant principal sent an email asking teachers to report any unsecured aspect of their classroom so it could be fixed. Teaching in a bunker-like room with no windows, I was also blessed with two doors, one of which did not lock. I promptly reported this. Several weeks passed in which I received no response to my email nor was the door fixed. Students aware of the unsecured door became upset so I sent a second email in November, 2015. It still had not been fixed when I walked out the door for the last time in May, 2016. Stay tuned. More tales from the files of the CSG to come.
99 I taught Advanced studies American history. At the time, we used two books, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath. It was easy to recognize that both books pushed a very socialist to communist perspective. Colleagues taught the novels as fact. I contacted the Ayn Rand Institute. I procured a deal wherein the Institute would provide students editions of Atlas Shrugged and teacher’s guides, free. I presented it to my Advanced Studies colleagues, who rejected it even though it would cost the school nothing.A parade of teachers (his words) had gone to the principal demanding I be disciplined and or fired. He called me in, accused me of being a conservative, said the two novels were necessary to teach kids about socialism, and angrily dismissed me from his office. Subsequently, I was demoted by the principal from Advanced Studies to teaching Regular Education American history. I remained part of the American history test writing team. We designed a standardized common test to be used by both Advanced and Regular Education American history teachers. When the young team leader, hand-picked by the principal, asked my opinion about the test questions, I demurred. I didn’t want to be accused of being controversial or non-collegial, for which I had already been written up, step one of a three step termination process. She insisted I share my concerns. I responded it sounded like the test was almost set and I had no problem taking it up the following school year. Again, she insisted I voice my concerns. Because I compose thoughts better in writing than verbally, I asked if I could forward my concerns in an email. She said that would be fine. This I did, because, like anyone else, I make stupid decisions. I pointed out some questions reflected a liberal bias and were historically inaccurate. They mirrored the point of view promoted by the two novels, asking for factual responses based on fictional material. When I was still an Advanced Studies teachers, I had contacted history professors asking them if my conclusions about bias and historical inaccuracies in the two novels was correct. They said “yes.” I reluctantly submitted my concerns, being as respectful as possible…and then she, at the urging of liberal colleagues, promptly ran to the principal with them. I asked her why she had done that. She said my concerns were over her head so she had no choice. He was furious. After school he came unannounced to my room, slammed and locked the door, and proceeded to shout in my face and pound his hand on my desk. He yelled he had been a good social studies teacher (there was no context for this rage filled comment), and accused me of attacking the team leader. I told him he was wrong. My son attended a school in a different district and the team leader’s sister taught at that school. During Back to School Night, I approached and told her what a great teacher and team leader her sister was at my school. I had gone overboard in being careful in phrasing my concerns. He yelled this was only to mask my passive-aggressive behavior! He told me were “through” and he was “finished” with me. He stormed out of the room and then we went on Thanksgiving Break ruined by worry over what would happen. When I returned, he wrote me up for alleged conservative bias not being “collegial,” and for using too many free market sources in my class (I counted, this was a lie). Step One of the Three Step Termination Process. I was also suspected of being a “Libertarian,” and from that point on would have to turn in every assignment, homework, quiz, test, and all materials to him to scan for conservative bias. And what I said in class? No sweat, socialIST studies colleagues had already been hiding outside my room listening, (students told me so and I caught them), and liberal teachers questioned mutual students over what I said in class. And they pawed through every article, hand out, and assignment I turned into the copy clerk for copies (she told me). Less than two years later, I was demoted again. Don’t tell me about tenure. I was in my 21stth year.
1010 This list is not intended to represent a hierarchy. I spent much more time talking with custodians and lunch ladies than I ever did colleagues and administrators…once the shunning began. I never had to worry about walking away from conversations with them and having to check my back for a knife.
1111 Yes, Virginia, there are only two sexes. Gender refers to the masculinity/femininity of words, not people.
Lucian K. Truscott (the IVth, no less) is an effing moron. This was in Salon, so I’m not going to link to it and give them traffic. If you want to see it, search the headline:
Youuuuu might be a gun nut if . . .
Woe be unto the innocent bystander, or even the less-than-innocent liberal wuss Salon columnist, if you raise your hand and say something . . . anything . . . about guns and gun ownership. Boy, are the gun nuts ever ready for you!
Especially if your column is chock full of false statements.
“New Zealand came to its senses and banned them. When will we?”
“Ban the sale of gas operated weapons.”
“I mean, look at the reaction of the NRA to something as sane as the recent ban on bump stocks”
Reaction to the ban? The VNRA came up with the idea. Their “reaction” was to their members’ reaction to the ATF actually doing what the VNRA called for.
“it’s an utterly defensible ban on a device that converts a legal gun into an illegal weapon of mass destruction.”
WTF? Even the lunatics at the ATF never claimed that. Do you know what a weapon of mass destruction is?
“If you listen to the NRA, you would think that banning bump-stocks is the first step on a slippery slope to disarming America.”
Or if you listen to Pelosi, who hopes it is. Or the Parkland Pussies.
“I was raised to understand that guns are designed and manufactured to kill. I was trained in the Army on multiple guns, and I was trained to use them to kill.”
Oh yes; let’s talk about Truscott’s military experience:
Truscott attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1969. […] He was threatened with being sent to Vietnam, so he resigned his commission about thirteen months after graduating, receiving a “general discharge under other than honorable conditions.”
Lots of relevant military experience there, huh? Here is more detail if you want it. Charge: “Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”
“The shooter in Las Vegas had bump stocks on nearly all of the 24 guns that were found in his room” 14 of 24 firearms were equipped with bump-fire stocks. However, no state or federal report on the incident has said bump-fire was used.
“Then they go after you for mis-using, or mis-interpreting gun language.”
Yes. Because terminology matters. If you get it wrong, you confuse semi-auto AR-15s with military assault rifles, or cars for main battle tanks. Or, like McCarthy, you file a bill to ban the wrong item because you didn’t know the correct word.
“Define an “assault weapon!” AR-15 style rifles aren’t “assault weapons” because they don’t have “select fire.””
No, dumbass. “Assault weapon” is a political term used to confuse the ignorant. An assault rifle is the select-fire weapon. Assault rifles are used by virtually every army in the world. No nation generally issues semi-autos to its regular troops.
“It is, of course, sold on the open market to any civilian who walks in with the scratch to buy one.”
Not quite. It’s sold to anyone with the cash, who passes a background check. And the particular pistol pictured has a suppressor, which is an NFA item requiring a tax, and federal permission to possess, which is another background check.
“a .177 bolt action rifle my brother gave me.”
Got me there. Could you be more specific? I don’t know of any firearm chambered in .177. Is that actually an air rifle? Or, perhaps, it’s .17 HMR.
“I was raised to understand that guns are designed and manufactured to kill.”
You were raised wrongly. Firearms are designed to propel a projectile at a target. Intent is in the mind of the user. A soldier is trained to kill the enemy. A kid plinking at cans has the intent of knocking them over, not killing.
“Guns like the assault rifles used by the Las Vegas shooter”
According the the final investigative report, he used semi-auto rifles, a bolt-action rifle, and a revolver. None were assault rifles.
“or the shooter in Parkland”
No assault rifles there either. Semi-auto with 10-round magazines.
“Sandy Hook”
Nope.
“Pittsburgh”
Wrong again. Semi-auto rifle and three semi-auto pistols.
“New Zealand”
No. Semi-auto rifles and shotguns. You aren’t very good at this.
I’m a bit puzzled by this statement. Perhaps someone familiar with Vietnam-era Army policies can explain it.
“The last one [semi-auto] I shot was an M-14 in the Army in 1965.”
That would seem to have been his first year at West Point. I would have thought that there’d be a little more rifle training during the four years, and certainly I’d have expected him to qualify once on active duty. Did they not trust him with firearms?
Hey, let’s look at another Truscott column:
Assault rifles are insane: New Zealand came to its senses and banned them. When will we?
Oh, I can hear them now. The NRA and its ilk will tell you that this military-style assault rifle is just the thing to use hunting deer, or elk, or some other poor creature. But it’s really a killing machine, a thing you can buy that is designed for one purpose: to kill a “soft target” from up to a mile away. That is insane.
He’s ranting about the Victrix Armaments Scorpio, which he thinks is “a rifle very similar to “ the “POF USA P-308 AR 10.”
The Scorpio is a bolt-action rifle. Just like his grandmother’s heirloom .22. Standard 5-round capacity; probably less than his .22, or his revolvers.
Oh, well. His market has always been anti-rights lefties, so I guess he’ll continue to play well there. Not so much in the real world where people take time educate themselves. I expect you could slip a drive belt around his grandfather’s rotating body and power a small city.
[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]
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“Imagine the deaths if the shooter [Las Vegas] had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get. Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”
“Durn tootin’, great shootin’. Cool dude sertin’ he’s 2nd Mendment rahts. Hell yeah! Every country has its psychopaths. In US they have guns.” [Mocking misspellings in the original].2
Richard Dawkins, author and famous atheist.
“The NRA, a vile organization with a sinister, deadly grip on America’s lawmakers, bought Trump’s silence when they backed him during the election campaign.”3
Piers Morgan
“After Sandy Hook and Las Vegas, what is the rationale for any civilian owning an assault rifle and high capacity magazine?”4
Barbara Streisand
“How long do we let gun violence tear families apart? Enough. Congress & the WH should act now to save lives. There’s no excuse for inaction.”5
Joe Biden, former Vice President
“I’m not an ordained minister; I’m not a theologian, but these guys [NRA] are going to hell.”6
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, sixth grade teacher, Utah, and Vice President National Education Association [NEA] the nation’s largest teacher’s union.
Television news reporters often refer to semiautomatic rifles as “assault weapons,” say guns “go off accidentally,” infer AR15s are capable of full-automatic fire, employ the phrase “gun violence,” and display background screen icons (Browning High Power for example) in reports on violent assaults even when the weapon used was a knife. If journalists are going to bang on authoritatively about something, shouldn’t they know what they’re talking about? Considering network news is for many people their sole source of information, isn’t it important for journalists use proper terminology? Improper use of terms can confuse and mislead the public with respect to laws, regulations, and the types of firearms owned by citizens. I’ve dropped notes to journalists apprising them of proper terms when they used them incorrectly and all responses were cordial. Scott Goldberg of ABC News who incorrectly claimed bump stocks turned semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, refused to respond. Chris, a reporter in the Kansas City news market, agreed that news reports employ biased terminology. He revealed when discussing firearms, incorrect terms are actually provided through press releases issued by Police Public Information Officers relative to a crime under investigation and in scripts written by producers. Journalists are also guided by playbooks listing approved vocabulary that reflect political bias. For example abortion supporters are called “Pro-Choice” even though the choice promoted is abortion and opponents, who call themselves Pro-Life, are instead labeled “Anti-Abortion” or “Anti-Choice” hardly neutral or objective. Chris revealed he was chastised by his boss for saying “illegal alien” instead of the approved term “undocumented immigrant.” Job security enforces compliance.7
Perhaps at no time in American history has the meaning of words mattered more. Consider how for the past 50+ years the Left’s agenda driven political ideology has shaped America. Their control over public education is monolithic, they own pop-culture, the movie, music, and entertainment industries, dominate print and broadcast journalism, influence Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations, and have invaded professional sports. In public education, they write the narrative and point of view allowed to be taught to such a degree, classrooms are little more than indoctrination centers. As a teacher I came up against the Liberal’s hegemonic sway over what kids are taught and their ‘Edstapo’ goons on constant prowl for heretics and dissenters (especially true in SocialIST studies departments). There are ways of being burned at the stake without using fire. Spoon feeding a biased curriculum to an unknowing gullible captive audience is bad enough but perhaps worse is what they leave out. Political Correctness, invented by Stalin,8 dictates what kids are taught on every issue from global warming, immigration, economics, the Constitution, and gender bending, to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. Not taught the other side? They don’t even know one exists!
For years I’ve warned regardless of how many 2nd Amendment victories are won, America is always a mass shooting and Supreme Court appointments away from losing everything. Fewer Americans than ever today grow up exposed to firearms whether through hunting, target practice, or competition. Their source for information on firearms comes from pop-culture, news and social media, and public education all dominated by liberals hostile to the 2nd Amendment. At some point in their life, an individual is responsible for searching out the truth on any issue. But it doesn’t work that way. Americans are too intellectually lazy to bother. Rather than the rebuke so richly deserved for indolent self-inflicted ignorance, with patience and perseverance the great-unwashed must be educated. Hence this primer. Based on statements in the news and social media, to some degree non-gun owners seem to believe anyone can walk into a gun store, hand over cash, and walk out a few minutes later with a firearm. Is this true?
Only those legally eligible can purchase firearms and only in the state of their residence. Age requirements apply; 18 for rifles and shotguns, 21 for handguns, and they must present a valid drivers’ license. If expired, suspended, revoked, or they moved without updating the address on their license, purchase is denied. Everything is in order, can they now buy a gun? No. They must complete federal form 4473 providing identifying information; name; date and place of birth, social security number, and so forth. Next they’re required to answer a series of questions including who is the actual purchaser of the firearm. Buying it for someone else, a “straw-purchase,” is prohibited. Additional questions include; are they a convicted felon, under felony indictment, a fugitive from justice, drug user, dishonorably discharged from the military, renounced their citizenship, in the country illegally, not a U.S. citizen, subject to a restraining order, or if they have been convicted of domestic violence, misdemeanor or not. A yes answer to these questions means they cannot buy a firearm. An untruthful answer is a felony punishable by federal prison, fines, and loss of the right to own firearms, vote, and hold state or federal jobs…forever. Suppose they lie?
Once form 4473 is completed and signed by a customer, gun stores must call the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Police agencies and the military are required by law to provide information on prohibited individuals to the F.B.I. who, in turn, enter it into a centralized data base. Upon receiving a request for authorization to sell a gun from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder, the F.B.I. searches its data base determining if the intended purchaser is not legally prohibited. It’s the F.B.I. who authorizes or denies sales. Suppose a buyer has no criminal record but is mentally unstable? Information on those adjudicated through a legal process as “mentally defective” or having been institutionalized, is also entered into the F.B.I.’s data base and they will be denied purchase. Can’t an FFL just skip all this?
Commercial gun sales can only be made by FFLs. Information on each firearm they receive through purchase, trade, and so forth, must be entered into a logbook along with information as to whom it is ultimately sold. Logbooks are subject to random inspection by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms [BATF]. Whether storefront or homebased, FFLs must be able to account for every gun taken in and or sold. Data entry discrepancies may lead to revocation of the FFL and felony prosecution. If the business is sold or closes, logbooks and all 4473 forms are transferred to the BATF, a form of registration. If denied purchase at a gun store, can’t prohibited persons buy firearms at gun shows through some kind of “loophole?”
Gun show promoters lease venues for their events in turn renting space to FFLs, often gun stores. All laws and requirements with respect to buying and selling guns apply at gun shows. Private sales may occur but typically comprise hunting rifles, shotguns and relics. Police officers and AFT Agents are often on hand supervising compliance. Only a miniscule number of criminals purchase firearms at gun shows. Typically they obtain them through burglary and theft. But what about these machine guns we keep hearing about. Can’t anyone walk in and out of a gun store with machine guns?
In 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act [NFA] regulating various firearms and devices commonly known as “silencers,” but its main focus was submachine guns, those capable of firing continuously with one pull of the trigger. Submachine guns were not banned. Instead, owners paid a $200 stamp tax and registered the firearm with the federal government.9 The Gun Control Act [GCA] of 1968 was interpreted by the BATF to prohibit the importation of fully automatic firearms by civilians. In 1986, the GCA was amended by the Hughes Amendment (Representative Charles Hughes, Democrat New Jersey) prohibiting civilian possession of full-automatic firearms manufactured after 19 May, 1986. To sell and or purchase firearms covered by the GCA, individuals apply for and obtain a special license from and register the firearm with the federal government paying required fees.10 Title I FFL’s pay a Special Occupation Tax to sell full-automatic firearms. This elevates them to title III hence the common but inaccurate term “class III license.” GCA applicants must meet all legal requirements for ownership, submit to a 6 to 12 month BATF criminal background investigation, provide finger print cards and passport sized photos, pay a $200 stamp tax, and register the firearm with the BATF. Because no full-automatic guns produced after May of 1986 may be sold to civilians, their pool is extremely limited translating into stratospheric prices.11 The idea, as my son says, that “some edgy teenager” can afford one is preposterous. Although not an edgy teenager, add me to the preposterous list.
Yes, the sear portion of an AR, and other semiautomatic rifles, can be cut and modified to allow for full automatic fire. But, there will be no selective fire option. It can now be fired only fully automatic. Anyone caught with such a modified weapon faces 10 years+ in a federal prison, loss of the right to ever be in possession, let alone own, firearms, loss of the right to vote, and hundreds of thousands in fines. May I make a recommendation to anyone considering this modification? Don’t. You will get caught. It’s possible to modify or buy an already modified sear. It’s a small piece of metal and, as long as it’s not installed in a rifle, no problem, right? Wrong. Mere possession of a sear, modified to allow fully automatic fire, is considered the same as possessing a fully automatic rifle with all the same penalties. You will get caught. Once again, don’t do it. If you must fire one, patronize a gun range that rents these rifles. They’re fun but you’ll probably leave realizing how impractical they are for self-defense. Sustained controlled accurate fire? Yeah, sure.
Not every gun owner in America supports let alone belongs to a pro-2nd Amendment organization or gun club, not even close. Nevertheless, when the Left attacks and besmirches these organizations, they serve for liberals as surrogates for all gun-owners and that means you. The Left works off an old and well established ideology and doctrine; the will of the individual must be bent to and subordinated to will of the state. Private ownership of firearms has no place in such a world view and neither do inalienable rights. It’s our job to educate family, friends, and neighbors about the truth because it will not happen in tax payer financed public schools and universities.
22 Emily Zanotti, 2 October 2017, “Insane: The Worst Twitter Responses To The Tragedy in Las Vegas,” The Daily Wire, at www.dailywire.com/news/21/02/10/2017.
55 Alexander Kacala, “From Lady Gaga to Taylor Swift, Celebrities Respond to Yesterday’s Las Vegas Attack,” at http://hornetapp.com/stories/las-vegas-attack/amp/
66 Todd Woodward, Editor, “Downrange: “Teacher, Leave Gun Guys Alone,” Gun Tests 8 (August, 2013), 2. Lily Eskelsen Garcia is the vice president of the National Education Association, America’s largest teacher’s union which is also a major donor and supporter of the Democrat Party. She was speaking before a Netroots Nation Conference attended by 3,000 “progressive activists” leaders in the drive to forge a Leftwing consensus in public education curriculum in the classroom and political activism without.
77 Email from Chris, “AK-47 ‘Assault Rifle,” KCTV 5 News, 6 December, 2007 to the author.
88 Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, The VENONA Secrets (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000), 58.
99 David Higginbotham, “Gun Laws 101: Nations Firearms Act of 1934,” Guns.com at ww.guns.com/2013/01/03,
“Demonstrating perseveration, liberals insisting they don’t want to take away anyone’s guns is like the government telling plains Indians, because no tracks have been laid is proof trains will never come through their land.” Author
I Recently returned from Monaco celebrating Lewis Hamilton’s fifth Formula 1 World Championship, the Port Palace Hotel, (7 Avenue, Kennedy, Monaco) is fabulous. Hamilton, who is British and Black,2 joins Argentinian Juan Manuel Fangio at that mark with German Michael Schumacher holding the record at seven. Okay, I wasn’t really in Monaco. My family popped corks in the states. Cheers. But all was not well.
To my chagrin, the Great Unwashed turned Congress over to trolls who despise the U.S., hate its Constitution, and hate its Judeo-Christian foundations. I kind of understand young sock-puppet Millennials voting for neo-Marxist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (or is it Evita?) in spite of her abysmal ignorance of economics, history, and the Constitution after all, they probably went to public schools. When run by liberals, dumb kids showing up at school house doors (Alyssa Milano) graduate even dumber. What I can’t fathom is how anyone could vote for reprehensible batrachian Nancy Pelosi whose former career, if I’m not mistaken, included playing Miss Gulch, the woman who took Dorothy’s dog away. Technology doesn’t exist capable of measuring her level of arrogance, pomposity, and deceitfulness. Were she attached to a polygraph, it’d explode the moment she opened her mouth. Rumor has it she and Cher recently tussled on the floor of their plastic surgeon’s office over the last bottles of collagen, Botox, and a Styrofoam cooler of baby’s skin for grafting.
In Part 1, I observed writing on race and crime was akin to crossing a mine-infested no-man’s land. On one side is a race hurting from wounds inflicted through discrimination and hatred. They search for acceptance leading to healing. On the other is a race who, to some degree, exacerbate the crisis by indifference. It’s expressed through attitudes like; “Crime ain’t happening in my neighborhood, why should I care?” Or “I had nothing to do with racism, it all happened in the past, so, why are these people still so angry?” And worse; “It’s a black thing.” They relate to blacks as if the latter are recent immigrants rather than having been in America, almost from the start, as American as the white man.
Ah, but perched like vultures in burned out trees overlooking the no-man’s land of racial division are today’s young Neo-Marxists, ready to swoop down on anyone daring to address race and crime in a fair and honest way. Blacks willing to do so are chastised as “traitors, Uncle-Toms,” and “racial-sellouts.” For whites willing to address the sources of the problem come shrill high pitched harridan shrieks of “racist” from the twisted fever spittled lips of Left-wingers. White flimsy-bodied Kulak-haters in black unitards regret none of the mayhem, destruction, and death they’ve unleashed in minority communities by stoking the flames of mistrust and animosity. They need it. Social disorder is vital to the Left’s strategy to realize their great project; subordinating the individual to the all-powerful state. Their route to power has never been the ballot box. It’s riding the crest of a wave of mass social unrest and violence as they did in Russia, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Palo Alto. Racial division is a tool useful for the left in breaking down social order. Their technique is to whip up anger among blacks, goad them into acts of civil disobedience, and provoke overreaction by police like the 1960s, and then the revolution is on. Unless issues of race are addressed honestly, reconciliation remains a pipedream. If you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. As painful as it might be, the starting point is facing reality.
In 1999, Walter E. Williams, black Professor of Economics (George Mason University) wrote that “most violent crime in America, in our country, is committed by blacks.” They commit 54 percent of all murders, 42 percent of rapes, and almost 60 percent of robberies. With respect to interracial crime, “blacks are fifty times more likely to commit violent crimes against whites that whites against blacks.” Most of the violence is intra-racial with 93 percent of black homicide victims killed by other blacks.3 What the Left fails to mention is less than a hundred years after the end of slavery, a higher percentage of black children grew up in two-parent homes than white kids.4 In addition, the current crime problem in the black community was unheard of in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. They didn’t have to shut their windows and lock their doors like they did in white neighborhoods, and could stroll their streets after dark without fear. Poverty and high school dropout rates were on par, often less, than white communities as well.5 Crime, poverty, unemployment, and poor education in the black community, accepted as the norm today, is in fact not and never was. A direct correlation can be drawn between this monumental change and liberal government social welfare programs, starting in the 1960s, and decline of the black family.6 They were making it on their own when the government pulled the rug out from under them.
What went wrong? Who is responsible? How can we begin to fix this? Those are the questions that should be asked. Blacks didn’t do this to themselves. But these questions won’t be asked because white liberals stoking racial division today are ideologically the same ones responsible for what has been done to the black community in the first place through their social engineering. Compounding the problem are “black” groups misidentifying those who stabbed them in the back and, asking the wrong questions, choose the wrong solutions.
Today Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the New Black Panthers (NBP) are joined by white Crypto-Marxists promoting revolution in America. Since the 1960s, they’ve demonized America’s founding conservative institutions, religion and family, until they’ve become epithets for hatred and racism. They corrupted public education harnessing it as a transmission belt for ideological indoctrination of each generation. Next they set their sights on other conservative institutions, the Boy Scouts and U.S. Military and, through insidious feminization and homosexualization, they too fell. Finally, deploying a fictitious narrative cooked up in the rotting fetid swamps of their brains, they went after the last man standing, the police, claiming they’re the tip of the white man’s spear in a war to destroy the black race. It is them they blame for violence in black communities. Is any of this true? Have circumstances changed since Williams wrote about race twenty years ago?
Twenty-three percent of New York City’s population is black (only 33% is white) yet blacks account for 75 percent of the City’s shootings compared to 2 percent by whites. Its black population commit 70 percent of all robberies and blacks and Hispanics account for 98 percent of illegal gunfire in the city. Most of the victims are black and Hispanic. Redacted by the liberal media is the fact most legal gun purchases in the Five Burroughs are made by whites but only a miniscule percentage are used in crimes.7 Blacks and Hispanics commit violent crimes in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population as a whole. But Liberal whites, who typically don’t live in or near minority neighborhoods, insist crime rates are the same, proportionate, for all races. They contend no race commits violent crime at a higher rate than any other, therefore, New York’s crime and arrest rates should mirror those percentages. If 23 percent of the city’s residents are black and 33 percent white, then 23 percent of crime should be committed by blacks and 33 percent by whites. But that’s not what’s happening. Black crime is way out of proportion to their percentage of the City’s population. What then accounts for the disparity? According to the white liberal media, it’s the result of racism.8 The Left would have you believe cops protect families in communities where they often live, arresting black suspects for assault, robbery, rape, and murder but look the other way when the same crimes are committed by whites. Yeah, right. I served and worked with police departments on the East and West Coasts and never met a police officer who wasn’t more than happy to put the habeas grabbus on the scrotes and dirt-bags of society irrespective of race.
Contrary to what white liberal pantywaists at the New York Times claim, police killings of blacks are actually extremely rare. They comprise a “minute fraction of black homicide deaths.” Approximately 25 percent of those shot and killed by the police are black meaning 75 percent are not.9 An arithmetic exercise is in order to put this into perspective. Yeah, I know, I went to public schools too.
Blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population. They commit 57%+ of all murders, 45% of assaults, and 62% or robberies in America’s seventy-five largest counties.10 Of that 13%, approximately 47% are male.11 Approximately 49% of that 47% are between ages 18 to 34, the cohort committing the overwhelming majority of violent crimes.12 The 49% of the black population that is male represents 6.20% of the total U.S. population. The 47.7% of that 6.02%, ages 18-34, represents only 3.03% of the total U.S. population. When roughly 3% of a race commits 60% of the nation’s murders, and most of its rapes, robberies, and assaults, is it any wonder that cops profile, and people black and white, fear them? To be politically correct, should people equally fear Japanese, Indian-Americans, or Jewish Deli-owners? Wait a minute, professor, the Washington Post (marching orders for Bolshevik Millennials) claims “unarmed black men are seven times more likely than whites to die by police gunfire.”13 What do you say about that? If 60%+ of violent criminals are black, isn’t it far more likely the police will have encounters with them than whites? But let’s take a closer look at the paper serving the Kremlin on the Potomac.
Of the 987 people shot by police in 2015, 35 were unarmed black men, 2 unarmed black women, and 31 unarmed white men. Leftwing mouthpieces like the Post typically refer to unarmed suspects shot by the police as “victims.” What they dishonestly left out of this reporting is that of the 36 unarmed blacks, 5 tried to grab the officer’s gun and shoot him or her, several more had the officer down on the ground beating him or her senseless with the cop’s service equipment, (what would’ve happened once the officer went under), and 2 were killed by stray bullets fired from guns aimed at someone else. Black males are far more likely than white males to violently resist arrest, make a grab for the officer’s gun, and physically assault officers. In arresting suspects, no requirement exists for officers to first determine who is the better boxer, wrestler, or martial artist.14 Police officers are commissioned to enforce the law, keep the peace, and arrest those for whom probable cause exists to believe they’ve committed a crime. They’re not required to take a beating in performance of their duties.
Big surprise, the Pravda Post forgot to mention in cases they referenced that the suspects had gained control of non-firearm pieces of the officer’s equipment, including nightsticks, which are potentially lethal weapons especially when the officer is pinned to the ground, on his or her back. Detectives were beat bloody with their own portable radios while others under arrest, possibly on drugs, shrugged off night sticks, chemical sprays, and TASERS and were beating the cop senseless. Most people can only last a few minutes in an all-out struggle. But bad guys on drugs, like PCP,15 with the strength of Hercules, can go a lot longer. Officers often face suspects who are larger, stronger, and more physically fit. As a policeman, I took a class taught by a Captain from San Quentin, Marin County, California. Convicts behind bars practice escaping police holds, (feet apart and spread them, hands interlaced behind your head, and so forth), disarming cops, and killing them with their own service weapons. It was a chilling class. Once a cop is down, scumbags don’t need a gun to kill him or her. Kicks to the head, throat, ribs, and so forth will quickly incapacitate and kill a victim,16 one reason white-supremacist gnat-zies and ex-con thug-bikers wear steel-toed boots. If cops wait until they’re going under before grabbing the Smith & Wesson, it’s too late. Reality check; “Police officers are at a greater risk from blacks than unarmed blacks are from police officers. The per capita rate of officers being feloniously killed is 45 times higher than the rate at which unarmed black males are killed by cops.” And “An officer’s chance of getting killed by a black assailant is 18.5 times higher than the chance of an unarmed black getting killed by a cop.”17 But this is not what is explained in black communities or the liberal media.
Because some blacks target non-police random whites for “pay-back” assaults and the conflict between blacks and whites in general, talk of a “race-war” appears on social media. Regrettably, some blacks, including Economist Thomas Sowell and conservative former black Congressman Allen West believe the U.S. is already in the midst of a race-war. Random attacks on whites are justified as revenge for past injustices. Anyone with a white skin is fair game.18 Justification for race war are promoted by white liberal males tying to purge feelings of “white-guilt” guilt implanted into their skulls by public education, pop-culture, and university professors. To prove they’re not racists, they make common cause with BLM and NBP referring to the police as an “occupying force” and treat violent criminals as “victims.” Cop-killers are toasted as heroes within black communities and by white liberals19 who refuse to face the truth that crime in minority communities is black on black, not cop on black.20 St. Louis, Missouri, which makes Forbe’s Top Ten List of most dangerous cities in America like clockwork, is a black majority city in which 95% of homicide victims are black as are the killers.21 Kansas City, Missouri, called Kanshago in some circles (Kansas + Chicago) mecca for connoisseurs of abandoned boarded-up crumbling brick buildings, is 29% black and ranks as more dangerous than 94% of other communities in the state with an extremely high murder-rate, almost all black on black.22 Considering the municipal governments, school districts, and police departments of these cities are typically run by blacks, how can white millennial liberals continue to blame white cops? In addition, is it “white-guilt” that cripples their credulity or slavish adherence to ideology that causes them to stoop to or fall for race-hoaxes?
University of Missouri’s black president of the Missouri Student Association claimed “rednecks” in pickups screamed “nigger” at him warning that black students were going to be assaulted. He claimed the KKK had a presence on campus. Ultimately he, like black students at the University of Alabama and other colleges, confessed their stories of racial attacks were hoaxes. They made it all up.23 They painted the Swastikas and white supremacist symbols on buildings and dorm doors themselves. Further damage was done to the University of Missouri, negatively affecting enrollment and athlete recruitment, when black football players went on strike refusing to practice or play until graduate student Jonathan Butler ended his hunger strike.24 Butler, a self-described black “activist,” was protesting what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and demanding University President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resign for doing nothing about alleged anti-black racism at the University. Regrettably, vertebral atrophy won the day and these administrators were forced to resign over faux racism and racial hoaxing as leftists learned to use race to flex political muscle.25 Perhaps worse, in a massive display of cowardice and gonadectimization, Board of Curators Chairman (a charitable sex-designation) Donald Cupps apologized to black students for the faux racial incidents, political race “stunting,” and hoaxing committed by black students that also destroyed the careers of lifelong educators and administrators.26 My contacts out in Missouri, advise enrollment at Missouri’s flagship university has plummeted, hundreds of professors have been laid off, and so many dorms closed, the university is renting them out like apartments and hotel rooms. And the most tragic consequences of these false narratives and lies?
From Baton Rouge to Dallas, 2015-2016 saw an “extreme spike” of 56% in ambushes on cops over 2014. This spike began following well-orchestrated and publicized protests and riots coupled with the Left’s calculated inflammatory rhetoric (aided and abetted by former president Obama).27 Another consequence is the “Ferguson Effect.” Afraid of being accused of and punished for racism, police officers scaled back aggressive proactive policing and anything that smacks of profiling. As a result, violent crime has spiked with cities like Baltimore experiencing a blood bath. Street cops know that, like the University of Missouri’s Board of Curators, the powers-that-be will shamelessly throw them under the bus in a heartbeat to placate the violent mob.28 Who suffers the most? Blacks living in the inner-city. Way to go Lefties.
Thomas Sowell
1 Teachers are forced into retirement for various reasons. My crime was engaging in Unprotected Education. I dared to teach the “other side” as opposed to liberal dictum being indoctrinated into the minds of students and was targeted by a coven-like cabal of leftist teachers for expurgation. They were relentless. What makes me so dangerous now that I’m out? Because I was on the INSIDE for 25 years, I know what really goes on, and I’m going to tell. Watch for future articles.
22 I don’t refer to Hamilton as “black.” His father is Caribbean, of African ancestry, and his mum is a blonde Englishwoman. Lewis was born and raised in England. Formula 1 drivers represent their nation, their team, and the sport, not a race. The world, not me, describes Lewis as black. Naturally blacks claim him as he may go down in history as the greatest F1 driver of all time. Although half-white, some whites see him as a “black guy who is part white.” Born with a natural tan, I was forced to “defend” my racial composition as a teacher. Colleagues mocked my suspected racial composition, yes, teachers, and students made up songs whose lyrics were full of speculative mockery. It seems, unless one is 100% white, even if 80%+, they’re not accepted as white but as representatives for their tiny non-white part. Yes, racism exists in America.
33 Walter E. Williams, More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 1999), 20-21.
1010 IBID. 38. See also: Taleeb Starkes, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry (North Charleston, South Carolina, Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 23.
1414 IBID., 74-76. Citizens seem to think the local cop knows and represents every cop anywhere in America. If one does something wrong, all cops are guilty. I was asked often why cops used mace, nightsticks, and even guns on bad guys instead of using martial arts like William Shatner on the television show, T. J. Hooker. You know, Kung-Fu kick the bad guy’s gun from his hand. They said; Instead of shooting and killing bad guys shooting at you, why don’t you “wing” him instead? You can’t make up this kind of idiocy.
1515 PCP: Phencyclidine. Street name is “Angel-Dust.” Some people cook PCP in water and then, using a spray bottle, spray it on Marijuana cigarettes. They smoke it when dry. PCP, formerly a horse-tranquilizer, is a mind-altering drug than can cause extreme paranoia, violence, hallucinogenic episodes, psychosis, and gives the user incredible strength. How do I know? Whaddaya mean how do I know? I had to arrest these junkies and more than a few told me “how it was done.”
Timothy Lytton, professor at Georgia State University College of Law, says this could have implications nationwide because the judge ruled that Academy broke a federal law.
… I knew I’d found it. I happen to be familiar with Lytton, from correspondence last year.* Lytton has expressed outrage that: “Designs include handguns and semi-automatic assault-style weapons. Federal background check laws applicable to the physical sale of firearms do not apply to the electronic posting of digital blueprints”.
Mainly because electronic files aren’t firearms. He could never quite grasp that point. And while he seems vaguely aware of NICS, he’s a little hazy on other laws: “Since the 1980s, anyone can purchase the most lethal of firearms
free from all legal restrictions.”
W. T. F?
But this comment he made in a column last year is very, very important to our current discussion.
Gun parts. That’s… partially true. AR lowers, drop-in auto sears, and any receiver more than 80% complete require an FFL to sell commercially (and in the case of the DIAS, NFA applies). The ATF famously once classified a shoestring as an NFA-regulated machinegun.
But not magazines.
Which brings us to the Academy Sports “negligence” lawsuit. Academy Sports in Texas sold an AR with a 30-round magazine to the shooter-to-be, who presented himself (complete with ID) as a Colorado resident. The buyer passed a NICS check (thanks, negligent USAF). The magazine — unlawful in Colorado, which is why Magpul left the state — is the basis of the suit.
The two sides reportedly sparred at a hearing Thursday over whether the federal definition of a firearm includes any magazine sold with it, and whether a Colorado law that bans the sale of high-capacity magazines applies to Colorado residents who make the purchase in Texas.
There was no need for “sparring.” The judge should have tossed the suit with a sneer.
(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;
“Any firearm,” not any “firearm part,” or “accessory.” The ATF regulates AR lowers by calling them firearms. Drop-in auto sears are “machineguns.” How does federal law define “firearm,” or “rifle” in this case?
26 U.S. Code § 5845(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.
No mention of magazine there. No “or any ammunition feeding device for same.”
18 U.S. Code § 921(a)(3)
The term “firearm” means (A) any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive; (B) the frame or receiver of any such weapon; (C) any firearm muffler or firearm silencer; or (D) any destructive device. Such term does not include an antique firearm.
So federal law defines firearms and rifles, but doesn’t mention magazines as a part of either. In this case, we have to fall back on state law.
Does Colorado — the formal state of residence of the shooter — call magazines “firearms” in state law?
18-1-901 Definitions”
(2)(h) “Firearm” means any handgun, automatic, revolver, pistol, rifle, shotgun, or other instrument or device capable or intended to be capable of discharging bullets, cartridges, or other explosive charges.
No magazine there. In fact, 18-1-901(2)(e) makes it clear that that a firearm is a firearm whether or not it is loaded:
(e) “Deadly weapon” means:
(I) A firearm, whether loaded or unloaded; or
The magazine is extraneous to the firearm.
Let’s go a little deeper into Colorado law. Colorado does separately define large-capacity magazine.
18-12-301. Definitions
(2) (a) “Large-capacity magazine” means:
(I) A fixed or detachable magazine, box, drum, feed strip, or similar device capable of accepting, or that is designed to be readily converted to accept, more than fifteen rounds of ammunition;
(II) A fixed, tubular shotgun magazine that holds more than twenty-eight inches of shotgun shells, including any extension device that is attached to the magazine and holds additional shotgun shells; or
(III) A nontubular, detachable magazine, box, drum, feed strip, or similar device that is capable of accepting more than eight shotgun shells when combined with a fixed magazine.
(b) “Large-capacity magazine” does not mean:
(I) A feeding device that has been permanently altered so that it cannot accommodate more than fifteen rounds of ammunition;
(II) An attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition; or
(III) A tubular magazine that is contained in a lever-action firearm.
—
To Colorado, “large-capacity” magazines are a thing unto themselves, not firearms.
18 U.S. Code § 922(b)(3) restricts the interstate sales of firearms. It does not restrict the sale — interstate or intrastate — of accessories, whether scopes, slings, muzzle brakes, or magazines — which even Colorado doesn’t consider firearms. It simply doesn’t apply. Right, Prof. Lytton? (“Gun parts – as opposed to whole guns – are not subject to any of the federal regulations that govern firearms sales.”)
While Colorado statute 18-12-302 generally bans possession of “large-capacity” magazines themselves, I have to question whether that law would apply outside of Colorado.
Out of state? Of an object that was never alleged to have been in Colorado?
“Gun parts – as opposed to whole guns – are not subject to any of the federal regulations that govern firearms sales.”
Now I wonder why Lytton didn’t tell Ms. Covington that, instead of suddenly deciding magazines are firearms, contrary to actual law.
* From there, Lytton devolved into incorrectly describing the outcome of a lawsuit revolving about “MAC-10s,” misstating my positions, and evading nearly every question I asked. I can make copies of our exchange publicly available should he wish to dispute my account.
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