As gun owners, if we could just experience the grief and sorrow along with the rest of the country, instead of having it intruded upon by that impending feeling of doom about what the media, the politicians, and the people in society who don't much care for civilian gun ownership are going to do to our lives, liberty and often times livelihood? If we could go through something like this without worrying how much we're going to be the scapegoats? I know that's the thought that's been crossing my mind as this entire horror story is playing out in the media. I don't want to think about or deal with politics right now, but that's precisely what I have to start getting ready for if I don't want to risk that America, and the politicians who claim to represent her, in their rashest and most impulsive worst instincts, pass a knee jerk law that will overnight turn many Americans into instant felons. There are times I believe we all deserve a break from politics. This is one of them, but we will never get it.
I believe we will not leave this horror unscathed, either mentally or politically. Our liberties and beliefs will be called into question, ridiculed, beaten, and we'll be told to get in line for the good of everyone. This could very well be the point as which the pendulum swings back. The narrative that's been driven home is that NRA is beaten up and bloodied, and is no longer relevant. Regardless of whether that's true or not, what matters is what the powers that be believe. We may not believe the time now is for politics, and it shouldn't be. But as a variation on an old saying goes: we may not be interested much in politics, but politics is very interested in us.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Wouldn’t It Be Nice?
For Scumbags Who Kill Kids
Maybe we just need more laws to make violence stop? Because its sure been working great this far.There doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to why someone suddenly snaps and enters a school and starts shooting. All I know is that some coward has killed little kids in a Connecticut school – 26 dead as I sit here writing.
Is societal pressure so hard on these people they have no other recourse but to kill innocent babies that have no hope of fighting back?
What could possibly be going through your minds to actually plan and then implement a plan like this? These are innocent people – innocent children- going about their lives and because you're having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad life, you show up and take theirs away?
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Illinois Carry Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
Many thanks to reader Dan who forwarded this link. He also reports that: "The servers are going crazy at the moment. It took me many tries to get in and D/L the document. It runs 47 pages." From the opinion:
Twenty-first century Illinois has no hostile Indians. But a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower. A woman who is being stalked or has obtained a protective order against a violent ex-husband is more vulnerable to being attacked while walking to or from her home than when inside. She has a stronger self-defense claim to be allowed to carry a gun in public than the resident of a fancy apartment building (complete with doorman) has a claim to sleep with a loaded gun under her mattress. But Illinois wants to deny the former claim, while compelled by McDonald to honor the latter.
Steve Israel wants to ban guns that don't even exist yet
Rep. Steve Israel is apparently pretty scared. You see, he's calling for a ban on 3-D printer made guns. Apparently, just days after a gun was fired using parts from such a printer, Israel is terrified that someone might build a gun using the technology:
Israel (D-Huntington) said a group of young men recently built and fired six shots from a "Wiki Weapon" — an AR-15 assault rifle partially assembled with parts from a 3-D printer, Israel said.
"It is just a matter of time before these three-dimensional printers will be able to replicate an entire gun," Israel said at a news conference at the security checkpoint at Long Island MacArthur Airport. "And that firearm will be able to be brought through this security line, through the metal detector, and because there will be no metal to be detected, firearms will be brought on planes without anyone's knowledge."
Of course, there is still the argument that if there were more guns on planes, terrorists would actually be less likely to try and hijack planes. Of course, silly things like "logic" don't have a place in legislation.
Another aspect of this "logic" that's getting missed? So far, there are no 100 percent 3-D printed guns so far as anyone knows. That's right. Israel is freaking out about a gun that doesn't exist. He's not the first though, since there have been laws against this off and on for over 20 years.
Author and Boing Boing partner Cory Doctorow had this to say about the reality involved in such a law:
However, what Rep Israel doesn't say is how he hopes to accomplish his goal. Firmware locks for 3D printers? A DMCA-like takedown regime for 3D shapefiles that can be used to generate plastic firearms (or parts of plastic firearms?). A mandate on 3D printer manufacturers to somehow magically make it impossible for their products to print out gun-parts?
Every one of those measures is a nonsense and worse: unworkable combinations of authoritarianism, censorship, and wishful thinking. Importantly, none of these would prevent people from manufacturing plastic guns. And all of these measures would grossly interfere with the lawful operation of 3D printers.
Doctorow is dead on right about the difficulties. Frankly, it would be kind of impossible, especially since more and more people are building technology similar to this in their own homes.
Yes, it may make it difficult to keep guns out of particular places, but let's take a look for a moment at those places. There have never been mass shootings in places where there are a lot of guns. Gun stores, gun shows, and gun ranges, for example, have never been the target for maniacs or terrorists.
By contrary, schools and malls that are "off limits" to guns seem to be the preferred targets for these people. Maybe Isreal should look at that and realize that since limiting the technology is virtually impossible, maybe the secret is to make it irrelevant? If laws preventing people from carrying weapons were gone, there would be no reason for someone to try and use 3D printers to make undetectable weapons…and good people are far more likely to be armed.
Of course, that wouldn't look like the good congressman was "doing something" about this scourge.
Mexico Shows That Tight Gun Control Laws Don't Guarantee Compliance
Reason is spot-on with their analysis of the gun control, anti-rights opposition movement within Mexico, that good people will ignore bad laws. If it can happen there, surely it can happen in the States as well.
Wearer-of-bad-rugs Bob Costas may have temporarily put gun control back in the headlines, but his advocacy hasn't made firearms restrictions any less intrusive — or any more enforceable. Like fans of all sorts of restrictions, drugs especially, gun controllers tend to jump from fantasies about a world devoid of the objects of their wrath to demands that new laws be passed to make their fantasies come true. Rarely do they put much thought into whether anybody will actually obey such laws, and the consequences of littering the landscape with impotent legislation. I've written before that gun laws tend to be widely flouted, and a peek at our neighbor to the south offers more evidence of such widespread defiance.
Mexico is actually sometimes held up as an example of exemplary gun laws. Despite a sort-of constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms, Mexico has only one gun store, which is run by the army, and severe legal restrictions on gun ownership. From the New York Times:
The 1917 Constitution written after Mexico's bloody revolution, for example, says that the right to carry arms excludes those weapons forbidden by law or reserved for use by the military, and it also states that "they may not carry arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations."
The government added more specific limits after the uprisings in the 1960s, when students looted gun stores in Mexico City. So under current law, typical customers like Rafael Vargas, 43, a businessman from Morelos who said he was buying a pistol "to make sure I sleep better," must wait months for approval and keep his gun at home at all times.
His purchase options are also limited: the largest weapons in Mexico's single gun store — including semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the Aurora attack — can be bought only by members of the police or the military. Handgun permits for home protection allow only for the purchase of calibers no greater than .38, so the most exotic option in the pistol case here consisted of a Smith & Wesson revolver selling for $803.05.
So, the country is largely disarmed, right? Not so much. Put aside the well-armed drug cartels; average Mexicans don't let the country's laws get too much in their way. From Austin, Texas's KVUE:
Mexico has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. But while drug cartels have well-stocked arsenals, law-abiding citizens struggle to get a permit to own a gun.
Even so, in the seemingly tranquil region of northern Mexico, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, it's an open secret that many people have guns for protection.
"Most Mexican families do have guns in their homes, and they're illegal," said Alex LeBaron, a Chihuahua state representative and native of the town of LeBaron.
The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated (PDF) in 2007 that Mexicans owned about 15.5 million guns, of which 4.5 million were registered in compliance with the law. As NPR noted in a story on this same issue, Mexico has no real gun-rights movement largely because people don't perceive a need for one:
The director of a pro-gun website called Mexico Armado said there is no popular movement at the moment to liberalize the nation's gun laws. Perhaps, he added, that's because anybody who wants a weapon in Mexico — be they a good guy or a bad guy — has no problem getting one.
The assumption is that most black-market guns come from the United States (and not all of it from the BATF). Though, with the drug cartels arming themselves with military-grade weapons that are distinctly not available north of the border, that's obviously not the only possible source,
By the way, Alex LeBaron, the lawmaker quoted above, comes from a family descended from Mormon polygamists who fled to Mexico in the 19th century to escape American restrictions on their religion (the Romney family was included in that circle, for a while). Not only have LeBarons become Mexico's most visible gun-rights advocates, they're practitioners, too. Again, from NPR:
One night, in October 2009, a gunfight erupted between the LeBaron brothers and a squad from the Mexican army. The LeBarons claim the soldiers came to the front gate and did not identify themselves. Fearing they were kidnappers, Alex says, the family opened fire.
"In the middle of [the] dark, sometimes, it's better to shoot and ask questions later," he says.
One soldier was killed. One LeBaron brother and another farmer were charged with murder, but the judge ultimately dropped the charges because the evidence had been tampered with.
That firefight came after a family member and a friend were killed by criminals for organizing opposition to kidnappers. Not surprisingly, the community in which the LeBaron family lives, and which carries their name, has apparently since gained a reputation as a place to be avoided by criminals.
In a country where violent crime thrives amidst Costas-style gun restrictions, people have taken to openly ignoring the law to defend themselves. There's no reason to think matters would be much different north of the border.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
FoxSports hack blames 2nd Amendment, not KC Chiefs killer
FoxSports, the network that won’t accept firearms-related advertisements for UFC events, once again has appeared on our radar for small-minded public commentary from one of its bigoted personalities.
Jason Whitlock who once tweeted “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight” in reference to NBA star Jeremy Lin scoring a career-high 38 points for the New York Knicks, has offered similarly brilliant analysis to the recent murder-suicide involving the Kansas City Chiefs football player (sorry, we’re not contributing to his infamy by mentioning his name here) who murdered his girlfriend before whacking himself at the team’s training area.
Whitlock doesn’t blame the murderer.This is where he just gets seriously fucking retarded...
No, Whitlock blames the Second Amendment instead.More: FoxSports hack blames 2nd Amendment, not KC Chiefs killer | GunsSaveLife.com
…We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.