I’m working on an überpost on the topic myself, but Larry Corriea has beaten me to it: An Opinion on Gun Control. Go. Read. Spread it around.
Tag: gun control
From the Front Lines
U.S. Citizen reported on Monday:
Firearms and Ammunition inventory levels continued their plunge at Nationwide Distributors which serve firearms dealers.
Ammunition broke the 50% level (less than half of pre-election day stock on hand remains).
One order for Magpul PMags was cancelled today at Traction Control.
At 5:30 AM I showed 9,330 units on hand, when the order was received (at 5:00 PM) the quantity available was zero. My distributor reported over 70,000 Magpul PMags were sold last weekend alone.
(My emphasis.) My local favorite firearms vendor Dave reported this to me via email last night:
“Submitted for your approval”:
a) We sold more AR-platform rifles TODAY than we have in the past two months
b) We can’t replace the ARs that we have sold, because ALL of our distributors are sold out.
c) None of our distributors have any idea when they will see more.
d) Last week we received a shipment of over one hundred Mag-Pul 30-round P- mags and were worried about having them around through year-end inventory. As of today, we’re worried about finding more.
e) We are selling multiple cases worth of 9mm ball ammo every day. These are not being sold by the case, they are being sold as individual, 50-round boxes. (I bought two boxes myself today. I really have to sit down and do some handloading for 9mm. I have all the components. – Ed.)
f) I put out three to four Mosin Nagant M-91/30 rifles EVERY morning.
g) I put out two to three home defense shotguns EVERY morning.
h) ATF form 4473 (the “yellow form”) comes to us in case lots. The forms are shrink-wrapped 100 to a stack. Six stacks to a case. We have gone through three stacks since this past Friday. (This also counts forms that have to be destroyed due to mistakes, forms that are in a “delayed” status and forms that are in a “denied” status as well as forms that are not immediately processed for sundry other reasons).
i) We are totally sold out of AR lowers (in all manifestations), parts kits, and most other AR-related goodies.
j) The FBI maintains three call centers to process NICS checks. We have the 800 number on speed dial. The last two days I have had to keep pushing the “redial” button because of the “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy at this time. Please call back later.” message I hear when I try to call in for a background check. Average number of times I have to hit the redial button: fourteen. Conversely, once I actually do get through, the wait time to talk to a human, is seven to nine minutes. If the form I am calling in gets sent for “further review” it’s another five-plus minutes before I get to talk to the next human.
Markadelphia suggested in a comment yesterday that “People are really sick of it and there may very well be waning interest in guns.” Doesn’t appear that way, does it? Standard response #7.
Thomas Sowell – Voice of Reason
His latest piece is up at National Review Online, Gun-Control Ignorance. An excerpt:
There is innocent ignorance and there is invincible, dogmatic, and self-righteous ignorance. Every tragic mass shooting seems to bring out examples of both among gun-control advocates.
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
Quote of the Day – Geekwitha.45 Edition
Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?
Barack Obama, 12/16/2012
There was a time when an American leader that suggested that freedom was the root cause of evil committed against innocent children would have booed off the stage, and possibly ridden out of town on a rail.
You know, there are very constructive things that could be done, that meaningfully address the issues and are consistent with a society that is both formidably armed and free, which is what I would expect of a true leader.
But we all know that’s not where he’s going with this. He’s going to do something else, driven primarily by ideological agenda, because this crisis presents far too good an opportunity to waste.
Obama hears the blood lust of his increasingly grief unhinged base screaming for the heads of the NRA and their members, and senses his time has come, which for a man of hubris like him it is a time of great peril with respect to his decisions. Pride goeth before a fall, and pride is never more manifest than in a man who deems himself imbued with epic destiny having arrived at his moment in history.
Have no doubt: Had Lanza driven his mother’s stolen car in bloody zig zags through the school yard, no one would be screaming for the head of the chairman of the AAA, no one would be accosting car owners at lunch or on their facebook walls demanding that they justify their car ownership in the face such tragedy.
$DEITY bless this wretched nation, for it stands with thunderous applause at the precipice of a monumental stupidity.
A comment from yesterday.
And now, Judge Alex Kozinski:
The majority falls prey to the delusion — popular in some circles – that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth – born of experience – is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.
—
All too many of the other great tragedies of history – Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few – were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
This
No other comment.
Newtown, Connecticut is not Dunblane, Scotland
But gun control forces desperately want it to be.
Back in November of 2004 after the spree killing of six hunters in a Wisconsin wood, I wrote Birchwood, Wisconsin is not Hungerford, England. It seems another comparison is equally (in)valid. Yes, 27 people and one creature are dead, eighteen of those dead people are small children – first-graders. Yes, it’s horrible, senseless, inexplicable.
And no, the guns were not at fault.
Moreover, banning them wouldn’t help.
This is where I normally cite charts, graphs, data tables, and numerous articles supporting my position. I’m not going to do that here. I’ve done it for the better part of ten years. If you’re interested, check the archives.
Instead, I’m going to quote the words of John Green, father of 9 year-old Christina Taylor-Green, who was killed in January of 2010 by another spree shooter here in Tucson:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXZOGNhw6p8?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&w=640&h=385]
This shouldn’t happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society we’re going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.
The gun control forces say all they want is a “dialog.” Joe Huffman’s been having site problems recently, but he said it well back in August:
We had the “conversation”. Your side lied, cheated, and took unfair advantage at every opportunity. But still your side lost. Big time.
Your side lost on the safety argument and your side lost the legal argument (see the U.S. Supreme Court decisions D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago). You have no arguments left. The conversation was over years ago and all you are doing now is whining about the outcome. Go tell your problems to a therapist because the adults in this conversation aren’t interested in your delusions of relevancy.
Incidentally, this is one of my biggest gripes about wading into fact- and data-laden poo-flinging arguments with anti-gunners about crime rates and murders-per-100k and so forth. The correct answer is “Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.”
The tinfoil-hat crowd has been claiming that Obama (or his BATFE) will write an executive order or change the regulations making “assault weapons” and “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices” into Class III regulated items under the 1934 National Firearms Act, bypassing Congress and requiring licensing and registration. Others think that finally they’ll get a new “Assault weapon” ban through Congress, or even more.
Let me just say again for the record:
I won’t license.
I won’t register.
I won’t turn them in.
If you want to make me and several million other law-abiding, tax-paying citizens into felons, beware what you wish for. You may get it.
And Then There Were None
Remember this map?
As of 2011, only one state outright denied its residents the ability to carry a firearm for self-protection. Eight other states remained MAY-issue (California among them), but Illinois remained the only state insistent that its citizens weren’t responsible enough.
The Federal government has just reversed that.
Appeals court overturns Illinois concealed carry law in gun rights victory
SPRINGFIELD – In a huge win for gun-rights groups, a divided federal appeals court in Chicago Tuesday tossed the state’s ban on carrying concealed weapons and gave Illinois’ Legislature 180 days to craft a law legalizing concealed carry.
—
“We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
“The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside. The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense,” he continued.
“Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety. It has failed to meet this burden,” Posner wrote.
“The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment therefore compels us to reverse the decisions in the two cases before us and remand them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions,” he continued.
“Nevertheless we order our mandate stayed for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public,” Posner said.
Now we get to see what Illinois politicians consider “reasonable limitations.”
Should be entertaining.
Global warming? I think Hell is freezing solid…..
What a Difference Five Years Makes
Five years ago, Kansas City Star sportswriter Jason Whitlock wrote an op-ed on the topic of violent crime among black males after Washington Redskin Sean Taylor was killed by an armed burglar. His death was due to a gunshot wound to his femoral artery.
At the time, Whitlock wrote:
Someone who loved Sean Taylor is crying right now. The life they knew has been destroyed, an 18-month-old baby lost her father, and, if you’re a black man living in America, you’ve been reminded once again that your life is in constant jeopardy of violent death.
The Black KKK claimed another victim, a high-profile professional football player with a checkered past this time.
No, we don’t know for certain the circumstances surrounding Taylor’s death. I could very well be proven wrong for engaging in this sort of aggressive speculation. But it’s no different than if you saw a fat man fall to the ground clutching his chest. You’d assume a heart attack, and you’d know, no matter the cause, the man needed to lose weight.
Well, when shots are fired and a black man hits the pavement, there’s every statistical reason to believe another black man pulled the trigger. That’s not some negative, unfair stereotype. It’s a reality we’ve been living with, tolerating and rationalizing for far too long.
Well, after Kansas City Chief’s player Jovan Belcher’s murder/suicide, Whitlock is still peddling “aggresive speculation” and blaming a “KKK,” but his target has shifted a bit:
Sports gets so much attention, and people tune out the real world, that I try to take advantage of the opportunity to talk about the real world when sports lends itself to that and try to open people’s eyes. You know, I did not go as far as I’d like to go because my thoughts on the NRA and America’s gun culture – I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].
I think it’s obvious if you’ve traveled abroad, and traveled to countries where they have legitimate gun laws, that we don’t have to have what we have in America, where people somehow think a gun enhances their liberty, and that people somehow think a gun makes them safer. It just doesn’t. A gun turns some kids listening to music into a murder scene. And uh, you know, if you don’t have a gun, you drive home. You know, kids listening to some loud music, you don’t like it, you go home and complain to your wife. But when you have a gun, you open fire, potentially, and take the life of a child.
So, it’s no longer the black KKK, but the NRA KKK that’s at fault for, well, black men killing black men (and women.) It’s no longer the “black KKK” (aka: the gang culture) that turns “kids listening to music into a murder scene,” it’s the NRA’s culture! You see, black men don’t die of murder at six times the rate of any other group in America because their culture tells them that getting “dissed” is a capital offense, oh no! It’s because they’re unable to overcome the evil brain-melting rays that guns produce!
Must be a genetic thing, no? So we need to disarm Billy Bob and Cletus so that a Jovan won’t kill his girlfriend and then himself. But what about Alexandria?
Sounds like rationalization to me. But what do I know. I’m just some cracker….
(h/t: SayUncle)
They Don’t Control Their Monster
One thing that constantly bemuses the gun-rights supporter is why gun-control supporters fear good people possessing the means to defend themselves.
I submit, it’s largely because they don’t trust themselves. They do not know and definitely do not control their inner monsters. And they don’t think other people can do it, either.
Unless those people have been sprinkled with the magic fairy dust of government authority.
German Gun Control
Seems to work over there as well as it does everywhere else:
Perverted gynaecologist who kept sick photos of his patients also owned nearly 1,000 guns
Police have discovered a gynaecologist was storing nearly 1,000 guns as well as keeping photos of his patients’ private parts.
The medic, Dr Christian Koller, stored the pictures in hidden cupboards and safes in his Munich office and apartment, alongside machine guns, rifles, pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
The officers were conducting a raid on the surgery after former patients made a complaint of malpractice against him and were not expecting to find over 700 guns.
Police say the doctor – who has surrendered his medical license – told them he was an ‘obsessed collector.’
‘He has a collector’s licence to keep some of the weapons as historic firearms but nothing on this scale,’ said a police spokesman.
His junk-on-the-bunk picture actually qualifies as an “arsenal” for a change!
There look to be several select-fire and full-auto weapons in there, too. I see only sixty or so guns in that shot, so there has to be 10x that many we haven’t seen. Obviously enough to get the Daily Mail editor’s knickers in a twist, since “over 700” and “nearly 1,000” are separated by, oh, about 300.