THIS makes it sound like he does.

David Codrea:

… the US Rifle M1 caliber .30-06 a gas operated, clip fed, air-cooled semiautomatic shoulder weapon weighing 9.5 lbs. Yes that one, the primary infantry shoulder arm that won WW II.

“Our HIGH SCHOOL armory had 50 of these, two Browning Automatic Rifles, five M1 carbines, two .45 cal. semi auto M1911A1 pistols, and one M3 submachine gun,” he continued. “Similar armories were present at even INNER CITY High Schools like Lindbloom, Marshall, Farragutt and most every school that had a junior ROTC, and there was NEVER a school shooting or any one harmed by the presence of these lethal military weapons.

I want to go back in time and attend this High School.  It goes to show that the problem isn’t guns or even access to them.  The problem is and always has been evil in the heart of man, and no law, no government program, no social engineering scheme, and no amount of intelligentsia with law degrees and master’s degrees in social work and international studies making rules and regulations for us peasants, will ever change that.

That’s what frustrates the statists so much.  They see evil, but they don’t understand it.  They cannot control it – they do not understand its origin, or its solution.  So they participate in it themselves in an attempt to eradicate it.  They want to bring in utopia, but they fail and become what they seek to remedy – evil itself – evil in the onerous rule they force on others.  It’s all a problem of world view, and their’s is doomed to failure at the outset.

Read it all at Examiner.

In Gun Companies Holding The States Accountable we discussed a two pronged approach to addressing the anti-gun legislation that is brewing in certain states, New York, Illinois and Colorado being three key locations. The first of the two prongs involves a refusal to sell to law enforcement when the weapons being sought are prohibited to non-law enforcement.  At the time, LaRue Tactical, Olympic Arms, Templar Custom and Extreme Firepower had enacted policies against selling to law enforcement in New York. The second prong involved the courtship of firearms manufacturers to move to more gun friendly states.  I have mentioned that Remington Arms, Rock River Arms, Springfield Armory and Kimber were prime candidates for this courtship, and I had made a special plea for Remington to relocate to South Carolina along with other firearms industries to move to the South in general. Since publication of these articles there have been other firearms manufacturers who have joined the boycott of New York law enforcement.  Joining the expanding group are the following companies.

• Bullwater Enterprises
• Westfork Armory
• Smith Enterprise
• Alex Arms
• Spike’s Tactical
• Quality Arms
• Liberty Suppressors
• Doublestar Corp
• American Spirit Arms
• Trident Armory
• Head Down Products
• J&G Sales

Barrett Arms has also joined the group, issuing the following statement.

Barrett’s Position Regarding the Assault on Liberty February 20, 2013 Barrett opposes those who are illegally disarming the American public from their efficient arms and creating superior armed elitist government agencies. Elected state officials of New York, having been sworn to protect our Constitution, have instead committed an offense against it and their citizens by stripping inalienable rights duly protected and guaranteed under the Second Amendment. By their deliberate and sinister actions, these officials now cause their state and local policing agencies to enforce these unconstitutional and illegal so called “laws”. By current law, Barrett cannot be an accomplice with any lawbreaker, therefore, cannot and will not service or sell to New York government agencies. Barrett also applies this stance to the individual elected official who, as a matter of public record, has voted for or created regulation that violates the constitutional rights of their citizens. This is an expansion of our 2002 ban against the California government due to their second amendment infringements, and shall apply to any future violators.

Additionally, the states are lining up to court firearms manufacturers.  South Carolina wants Remington and is telling them so.  Magpul has threatened to leave Colorado if the law is passed prohibiting the very magazines (PMAGs) made in their factories.  Alabama is recruiting Magpul, along with Texas, and Oklahoma is in competition with South Carolina in its quest for Remington. New York Governor Cuomo has stated that “There is no shortage of responsible venders who would want to assist New York’s law enforcement agencies keep New Yorkers safe.”  Perhaps there are still those who will supply firearms and firearms parts and accessories to New York law enforcement.  Colt is still smarting from losing the M4 contract with the Army. But the list of non-participants is dwindling rapidly, and it is best for reputable firearms manufacturers to make their decision sooner rather than later.

I had previously mentioned that I had sent notes to Smith and Wesson, Rock River Arms, Remington, Glock, Sig Sauer, Springfield Armory and Kimber asking for their official position on selling to law enforcement in states that have anti-gun policies.  I have received no response from these companies. Making decisions of this kind are major events in the life of a company.  Relinquishing revenue is serious stuff, and decisions like that are usually made at the board of directors level.  On the other hand, gun companies who lead the pack are also usually rewarded in the American civilian market, and this market is far more valuable than law enforcement or even military. Pressure on these companies is appropriate, and they need to hear from you concerning the totalitarian measures being taken in anti-gun states.  Who will be the first really large firearms company to refuse to sell to these states?  Once this first domino falls, the rest will follow.

UPDATE #1: Michelle Malkin has an article up focusing mainly on manufacturing aspects of this issue, although also briefly discussing the boycott of anti-gun states.  She has good information that complements my own.

UPDATE #2: reddit/guns has the most comprehensive list of companies to date that are participating in the boycott.

Courtesy of NC Gun Blog and refusetosell.org.  It is still necessary for the large companies to participate.  Reddit/guns has a list of e-mail addresses to whom you can write.

UPDATE #3: David Codrea has some salient thoughts.  “I’m reminded of “Braveheart,” where the titled and propertied lairds cut their own deals with Longshanks and withdrew from the field, leaving the freedom fighters to take all the risks and suffer all the losses. It’s past time the entire industry was put on notice and then held accountable for any cowardice in this time of threat on all fronts.”

UPDATE #4: Thanks to Ron for the link at reddit/guns.

Soon to the report – but first a little story.

Once upon a time some teenagers were racing hot rods down Ocean Drive in Myrtle Beach, S.C.  Tourists were hit by one of these kids, and so the townsfolk came together and decided that something must be done to make things safer.  The decided on a plan, and even had a real time, in-situ display of their new ideas for the voters before the town voted on it.

They all got together that day and after speeches about “caring for the children,” and waded into the ocean, each participant having another participant (they called him their swimming buddy) within 20 feet of him, both to the right and left.  No one, according to the new ordinance, would be allowed to swim in the ocean, night or day, without buddies within 20 feet.  It would all be monitored by cameras and enforced by newly hired police officers.

Some of the townsfolk objected that no one could ever swim again because the line of buddies would never end since a person would have to be flanked on both sides, and thus the stipulations could not be logically met, but the participants told the objectors to “shut up, just because.”  Others objected that this all had nothing whatsoever to do with High School kids racing hot rods on Ocean Drive, but the partipants and local politicians all told them to “shut up, just because.”  And besides, “think about the children.”  And then, “shut up.”

I hope that this little parable has been a useful introduction to what seems to be coming down the road.

No surprise but newsworthy insofar as I think this is the first time a Republican as prominent as McCain has talked openly about some new form of gun control passing Congress. If you’re not sure what he means when he refers to the plan Coburn and Schumer are working on, read this. They’re going to close the “gun-show loophole” but carve out exceptions for family transfers and maybe for people who’ve already been vetted for concealed carry. How many votes will there be for that? Well, they’ll start at 58: Coburn and Mark Kirk are part of the group that’s working on a compromise bill and McCain’s already hinting that he’s a yes, so add those three to the Democrats’ 55 (no Dem would dare oppose a measure that might complicate Obama’s “Republican obstructionism” message on gun control). Collins and Murkowski are always gimmes on big bipartisan initiatives too, so there you go — 60 votes for cloture, although there’s bound to be many, many more than that. Follow the last link for your reminder that expanded background checks is the one gun-control measure that polls fantastically well across party lines. Even Lindsey Graham, who needs to protect his right flank in case of a primary challenge in South Carolina next year, is open to some form of new background checks albeit not the Democratic plan. You might see a majority of House Republicans vote no, partly as a symbolic rejection of further gun-control regulations and partly to distinguish themselves from the squishy RINOs in the Senate for the benefit of red-district voters, but it’s going to pass that chamber too with bipartisan support. When push comes to shove, I think Boehner would rather violate the “Hastert Rule” and push this thing through with mostly Democratic votes than risk handing Obama a potential weapon for 2014 by rejecting something that even many Senate Republicans support.

Regular readers know my view.  Universal background checks are a pretext for and necessary prerequisite to a national gun registry, and a national gun registry is a precondition for gun confiscations.  Furthermore, none of this has anything to do with the shootings that have been in the news lately.  And finally, we’ll see how that exception goes where they want to carve out provisions for transfer of firearms to children.  Give it some time – it will turn totalitarian because that’s the way totalitarian systems work.

But remember this fact about the entire conversation.  None of this is related to the antecedent events.  The only clear-cut and logical legislative action I support is abolishing gun-free zones.  Everything else is just a smoke screen.

The Washington Times:

Bob Beckel, co-host of “The Five” on Fox News, doubted the need for women to carry guns on college campus as protection because rape rarely takes place at institutions of higher learning anymore.

Mr. Beckel said, according to a report by The Blaze: “When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?”

Another co-host, Eric Bolling, said rape on campus was “rampant,” The Blaze reported, and said denying women the right to carry at college was tantamount to an open invitation to criminals.

Co-host Dana Perino agreed with Mr. Bolling, that rape is a huge issue for women attending college. Mr Beckel wasn’t swayed.

“Date rape, yeah that’s one thing,” he said, according to The Blaze. “But you gonna take a gun out and shoot your date?”

Politico reports Mr. Beckel subsequently apologized for his remarks.

“It’s a horrible, horrendous issue. Simply put, rape is rape. Whether it’s date rape or it’s somebody coming in off the campus trying to rape somebody else,” he said, according to Politico. “I just want to straighten the record out on that. I simply was trying to make — there was not a distinction to make here. It simply was that date rape is rape, and that is, by any other definition, rape is rape.”

The great thing about extemporaneous speaking is its honesty, regardless of the subsequent triangulations.  The democrats really are the party that supports rape.

Good grief!  CCRKBA has turned to the dark side (h/t David Codrea).

One of Washington state’s largest gun-rights groups is negotiating with lawmakers on a deal that would simultaneously boost a controversial gun-control proposal and remove one of gun owners’ biggest fears.

Alan Gottlieb, of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said Tuesday night he has offered to support mandatory background checks for all firearm purchases if state lawmakers agree to end what some see as a de facto database of handgun owners.

“I need to see the final version, but we’re working with the sponsors of the bill to try to get one that’s workable,” said Gottlieb, who also runs the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation. “If we can accomplish that, it’s a win for all sides.”

No.  It is not a win for all sides.  It’s a win for the totalitarians and a loss for law abiding citizens.  I don’t want to hear another damn thing about how the NRA waffles and turns against our interests.  At least – so far – Wayne hasn’t turned to this kind of pandering.

Good grief!

Poor Bob Bettilyon tries but doesn’t get it quite right.

Since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, and many believe in the original-intent interpretation of the Constitution, perhaps only guns with the technology that existed in 1791 should be allowed, i.e., muskets.

I would be OK with a “concealed musket law” or a “stand your ground musket law.”

Carrying gun powder and 30 lead balls for a musket seems more reasonable than 30-round magazines. Drive-by musket shootouts, or lunatics going to a school armed with a musket and 30 lead balls, don’t seem quite as scary.

The National Rifle Association could say “only a good guy with a musket can stop a bad guy with a musket.”

So, I propose banning all guns not originally available in 1791, except for real militias such as a police department.

The first paragraph quoted sets the stage for the misadventure since it contains false assumptions.  The argument ends in disaster, when he says that police departments are the real militia.

Using the colonialists as a reference point, they couldn’t have been referring to police departments as the militia, because the constabulary existed in colonial times.

… the constabulary in North Carolina resembled the office of petty constable in the mother country, though in the colony it lacked the “almost infinite variations of methods [found] in [the] shires and hundreds and parishes” of England that emanated from centuries of “custom and practice.” Fundamentally distinguishing the English petty constable from his colonial counterpart was the former’s role as a spokesman for his village. In the hierarchical schema of English polity and society, the petty constable served as an intermediary between local inhabitants and politico-judicial authority. In North Carolina, however, local justices of the peace and sheriffs stayed more closely attuned to the people, obviating a mediatory role for the colonial constable.

And do you notice one of the differences pointed out between British and American constables?  We don’t need or want an intermediary.  In fact, we don’t want a “hierarchical schema” at all.

Don’t tread on me.

Frum again.

He says he’s working on a full response to my earlier post, but he provides an “appetizer portion” here. He offers a new anecdote of a gun accident, the statistic that there are more than 600 fatal gun accidents per year in the U.S., and an assertion that guns are not regulated like other consumer products.

First of all, the anecdote is a little bizarre. According to the story released by the police department — and I called to confirm — an old man tossed his coat on top of a gun while it was on a dresser, and the gun went off. The sergeant I spoke with said he didn’t think the gun fell to floor; it just went off when the coat hit it. The sergeant said the gun was “not an antique,” but an older-style revolver. Older revolvers are often not designed to be dropped without firing, but they usually have pretty heavy trigger pulls. If this is the way events really unfolded, it’s a one-in-a-million occurrence.

Earlier this week on Twitter, Frum said that people who say guns are safer than cars must not know what a denominator is. So let’s do the math on these 600 fatal accidents. Somewhere between 35 percent and 47 percent of Americans have a gun in the home; to be generous let’s go with the low number and say 100 percent have a car. Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that 600 fatal gun accidents would be the equivalent of 1,700 car fatalities if we’re assessing the average risk of owning one versus the other. There have been more than 30,000 car fatalities almost every year since the mid-1930s.

This is becoming boring.  So let’s grant the fact that older revolvers didn’t have something like the transfer bar in modern day Rugers.  Fine.  Still, unless the hammer was cocked, I don’t believe this story.  It’s a tall tale.  I don’t care that it was “confirmed” by a phone call.  Without the hammer being cocked, there is no mechanism to make this happen.

However, let’s go ahead and set the framework for Frum.  It is a gun.  It is not safe.  Got it?  That’s why we have rules like knowing your backstop, observing muzzle discipline, observing trigger discipline, securring it from children, and so forth.

It is not safe similar to the fact that automobiles aren’t safe, operating power equipment isn’t safe, and any of a host of activities in which we engage daily aren’t safe.  It isn’t safe to cross the street in my city on foot, even when you have the right-of-way.

Any activity can be made safer by observing the rules and having proper discipline.  The fact that Frum keeps trotting out anecdotal evidence of people who do not observe these rules only means that he thinks we’re stupid.  Rather, it is Frum who embarrasses himself because he can’t understand the ameliorative effects of good behavior.  Or he doesn’t want to because of his long, dark experiment into progressive ideology.

Prior: Further Proof That David Frum Is An Idiot

The Washington Times:

Gun-control and gun-rights advocates are locked in a fierce dispute over what rank-and-file National Rifle Association members and average gun owners think about President Obama’s gun-control proposals, with the NRA sharply rebutting numbers purporting to show that its members and gun owners are largely receptive to new laws.

According to polling conducted by the gun-control advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, whose co-chairman is New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, 74 percent of NRA members support requiring a criminal background check on anyone purchasing a gun.

But the NRA says that is not the case.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s claims that gun owners are divided are totally false,” said Chris Cox, the group’s chief lobbyist. “It is nothing more than an attempt by anti-gun activists to further their long-standing political agenda.”

In response to such figures, the NRA recently released its own survey — touting it as “the only legitimate survey of NRA members in existence.” The gun-rights group noted that the mayors’ group and other recent surveys did not have access to NRA membership rolls and thus their polls could not reliably sample its membership.

The poll of 1,000 NRA members shows that 89 percent oppose a ban on military-style, semi-automatic weapons and 92 percent oppose a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The group says the numbers prove that members are “united in their desire for Washington to focus on keeping firearms from the mentally ill and to reject unconstitutional gun control measures that infringe on Second Amendment rights.”

But Sen. Christopher Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, said gun owners and NRA members generally agree that strengthening background checks is a good idea …

“The NRA and its lobby — especially when it comes to the debate we’re having right now in Washington — is badly out of step with the people that the NRA claims to represent,” Mr. Murphy said on a conference call Monday.

The polls showing that NRA members want universal background checks are lies.  All of them.  They are fabricated by gun-grabbers who have no problem coloring the truth, making up things or saying things they know to be outright lies.

However, Chris is trying to persuade his buddies to come join him in his quest for totalitarianism.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is trying to convince his former colleagues in the House and his new colleagues in the Senate that there won’t be any retribution from gun owners at the polls, if they do the right thing and vote in favor of common sense gun control legislation.

Chris is a naive simpleton if he believes that.  If he doesn’t, he is willing to throw his colleagues under the bus.  We gun owners never forget, and we do and will take retribution.

Be wise and cautious.  Don’t do things from which there is no return.

Crazy uncle Joe in his own words.

“You don’t need an AR-15, it’s harder to aim, it’s harder to use,” he stressed.

Biden indicated that he has given his own wife the same advice. “I said, ‘Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,’” he said, and urged viewers, in closing, “Buy a shotgun, buy a shotgun!”

Right.  Hand a double-barrel (I assume, 12 gauge) shotgun to a potentially small frame woman, tell her to shoot both barrels into the air, wasting her shots and leaving her defenseless, and dispense with actually aiming a weapon.

My dumb-ass dog is smarter than him.  Seriously.  Folks, do … not … ever … take an approach like this in situations of threat to your person.  Ever.  There are so many things wrong with this it’s hard to know where to begin.  First of all, do not ever leave yourself no means of egress if you are under threat, and do not ever approach the person who is threatening you.  In Castle-doctrine states you don’t have to retreat in your own home, but that’s different than recommending that someone walk out of their home.

Second, the choice of weapons should be up to the shooter, but a 12 gauge shotgun has some kick, and she may not be able to handle it.  The 5.56 mm round has much less recoil, aided by the buffer spring in the AR which absorbs much of the recoil.  Finally, no self defense expert recommends warning shots.  In fact, forget self defense experts.  No serious person anywhere recommends warning shots.

Just please.  Seriously.  Do not ever do what he is recommending.  He’s just crazy uncle Joe being himself.