David Codrea:

The major problem with Wilkinson’s snottiness is that’s all he’s got. GOA refers people to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, which shows overwhelming preference among “unauthorized immigrants” for the Democrat party.

Yep.  I’ve discussed this myself, and there could be no greater threat to gun rights than to put people in charge who want to take them away.

Kurt Hofmann:

Oh–about that “Only Ones” exemption. When this technology, and mandates for its use, were first being pushed, much of the rationale was based on the notion that it would protect police officers from having their guns grabbed by a suspect, and being shot with their own guns. Apparently, though, New Jersey police were strangely unappreciative of this concern for their safety, forcing the exemption as a condition for their support for (and lack of active opposition against) the requirement.

There’s Kurt again, destroying their arguments by pointing out inconsistencies.  The argument is a ruse, and the fact that LEOs don’t want those stupid guns shows just how stupid they are.

Some smart ass named Teret says “They thought the air bag would kill them,” said Teret, who did early work on air-bag technology. “They thought it would shove them out the back window, that it would explode. It takes awhile to dispel these mythologies.”

Uh huh.  Well, I guess air bags can actually kill you.  And so can a gun that doesn’t function when you need it to.  And the cost of this ridiculous machine?

The cost is high. Amatrix’s iP1, a .22-caliber pistol, is priced at $1,399 — plus $399 for the watch. A .40-caliber Glock handgun can be had for about $600.

Like I’ve said before.  Put it on the market and see how it does.  See also my coverage on smart guns.

Mike Vanderboegh has an absolutely must see graphic on ammunition.  It is so true that it’s scary that someone reads my mind like this.  And pray for Mike.

And finally, no, I don’t think I bear a single bit of responsibility for reducing gun violence, any more than I bear responsibility for drug problems in the ghetto or providing medical care to people who don’t work.

Peretz Partinsky describes a series of events that occurred on July 25, 2013, but apparently on which he only recently published.  I won’t quote the entire article.  The part that I do quote will force you to read the rest, and the rest is remarkable.  If it weren’t true you almost couldn’t make this kind of thing up – it is so emblematic of an abusive police state.

My friend Ben Woosley and I were hanging out at Driftwood Bar on Folsom Street. We were talking work; we had three drinks over the course of three hours. We left the bar at 12:45am and walked towards my house, a block away.

The accident had happened just seconds before…

The bicycle had flipped forward and lay unattended in the street. The girl’s foot was bare and mangled, her chin bleeding. There was blood on her jacket, a puddle of it on the ground. Her name was Rebecca. “Where am I?” she kept asking. She was lucky to have been wearing a helmet. Josh, who had been giving her a ride on his handlebars, was wincing and bracing his shoulder.

Neither of them had working cell phones. When they asked me to, I immediately dialed 911. According to the record, it was 12:49am.

While I relayed the situation to the operator, Ben and the first bystander were helping Rebecca elevate her foot. Ben held her hand and supported her body on the ground. Rebecca borrowed his phone to call her friends and family.

Four minutes had passed when I spotted a fire truck and several police cars in the distance and stepped into the street to wave them over. “They arrived,” I told the 911 operator. She thanked me and told me to expect an ambulance to follow.

I identified myself as the caller to the half dozen police who poured out of squad cars and stepped back onto the sidewalk in front of Radius restaurant.

Sgt. Espinoza, short, stout, grey and assertive, asked Ben and me whether we had witnessed the accident. We said that we hadn’t, but arrived shortly thereafter. I was standing 15 feet from the scene beside Officer Kaur, a stocky female of South Asian complexion. She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome.

The firemen were examining Rebecca and Josh. Ben was still supporting Rebecca’s back when Sgt. Espinoza and Officer Gabriel grabbed him from behind without warning, putting him in an arm lock and jerked him backwards over the pavement. They told him sternly that he had to leave now that trained medical professionals had arrived, implying that he was interfering and justifying their violent actions. The officers dragged him across the sidewalk, propping him against the building. Rebecca was still holding Ben’s cellphone when she lost his support. “Where are they taking him?” she asked perplexedly.

It all happened within 5 minutes of the police’s arrival. The sirens and emergency vehicles, the sudden arrival of over half a dozen uniformed personnel, two of whom had grabbed my friend, transformed an intimate street scene into something chaotic. Officer Kaur shouted at me to cross the street. It was very sudden and I was, admittedly, in shock. I stammered that I intended to head home, but that my friend was over there. I pointed at Ben against the wall, and said I’d like to take him home with me.

Without warning, I was shoved from behind by Officer Gerrans and then collectively tackled by Officers Gerrans, Kaur and Andreotti. As they took me to the ground, one of the officers kneed me in the right temple. On the pavement, I begged them to watch out for my recently broken right elbow. Knees on my back and neck pinned me to the ground. I was cuffed and left face down.

I was not told that I was under arrest, what the charges were, nor read my rights. I rolled over onto my back so that I could see the arresting officers and ask them their intentions.

Officer Kaur pulled me up so that I was in a sitting position, and then stepped onto my handcuffed hands, grinding them into the pavement. I was so suddenly transported to a distant reality, that I was still coming to terms with its operating principles. “Is this protocol?” I inquired and instinctively wriggled my hands from under her boots. Officer Kaur had full control of me physically. Again, she stomped her boots on my hands, demanded that I “keep [my] hands on the ground,” pushed me back face down, and walked away.

You can read the rest of his account, where he was taken to prison, detained without charges, placed into solitary confinement, and eventually made his way out of the system.  By my count [at least] the following illegalities were committed against Partinsky and his friend by the San Francisco Police Department.

1. Denial of due process (see Professor Glenn Reynolds on A Due-Process Right To Record The Police, and Morgan Manning on Photographers’ Rights).
2. False imprisonment.
3. Assault and battery.
4. Kidnapping.
5. Reckless endangerment.

The judges conspire with the police and don’t care about your rights (after all, those no-knock raids where cops point rifles at women and children require a warrant).  The police will be immune from prosecution for abuse and illegalities (or otherwise from the consequences of their actions) as long as we allow it to happen.

Eugene Volokh is discussing the very recent Ninth Circuit decision on the right to bear arms outside the home.  See also here and here.  Eugene’s comments are well worth reading.  Here is one interesting excerpt from the decision.

… with Heller on the books, the Second Amendment’s original meaning is now settled in at least two relevant respects.  First, Heller clarifies that the keeping and bearing of arms is, and has always been, an individual right.  See, e.g., 554 U.S. at 616. Second, the right is, and has always been, oriented to the end of self-defense.

See, e.g., id. Any contrary interpretation of the right, whether propounded in 1791 or just last week, is error. What that means for our review is that historical interpretations of the right’s scope are of varying probative worth, falling generally into one of three categories ranked here in descending order: (1) authorities that understand bearing arm s for self-defense to be an individual right, (2) authorities that understand bearing arms for a purpose other than self-defense to be an individual right, and (3) authorities that understand bearing arms not to be an individual right at all.

To illustrate, a precedent in the first category that declared a general right to carry guns in public would be a great case for Peruta, while a decision in the same group that confined exercise of the right to the home would do his position much damage.  By contrast, those cases in the third category — which, like the dissenting opinions in Heller, espouse the view that one has a right to bear arms only collectively in connection with militia service and not for self-defense within or outside the home — are of no help.

It’s very important to understand what they’re arguing and what they’re not.  But first, let me rehearse my view of the Second Amendment.

Recall that I view the Second Amendment as primarily and first of all a restriction on the power of the federal government.  It was meant to frame in, or circumscribe the centralized powers.  Therefore, it needed only one reason to restrict that power, that reason being stated as concerning the militia.  The Second Amendment is not restrictive, it is inclusive.  I’ll return to that in a moment.

Later, the Second Amendment was applied to the States through incorporation, and thus it applies to all U.S. citizens regardless of State.  However, this should have been superfluous at the time, since most States (Illinois being one exception, having been corrected only recently) recognized the right to bear arms in State Constitutions.  It should have been … but it wasn’t because of collectivist designs on control.

God gives me my right to bear arms.  Man can and should only recognize and respect that right.  I do not have to be a member of the militia to justify my right to own weapons (the Second Amendment gives only one reason that the centralized powers cannot infringe on my rights to bear arms – there are many others).  Again I say – and always remember this – God gives me the right to weapons and to use them for self defense.

Such notables as my friend Bob Owens have asked the question, loosely paraphrased, if militia membership is required, then what kind of training should we be engaged in?

No, and a thousand times no.  Paraplegics, the elderly, shut-ins, and all manner of people who cannot be a member of the militia have just as much of a God-given right to weapons as does a healthy, 19-year old strapping young man ready for service.  It does no good to say that we’re all member of the unorganized militia, because my 90 year old grandmother in-law cannot get herself out of bed.  It’s a lie and a subterfuge to say otherwise, and it avoids the hard question about the ultimate root of my rights.

Now back to what the Ninth Circuit said.  While I am in both categories (i.e., right to bear arms for self defense and also for resistance to tyranny), again, it’s important not to misconstrue their words.

The case before them had nothing to do with the militia or resistance to tyranny.  It had to do with the right to bear arms at all times for personal self defense.  Thus, decisions, case law, and legal texts that have to do with anything but this are irrelevant to their decision.  They lack probative worth in this context.

I think that this is right, and I think that this is generally a good decision.  Let me make a careful note that I am not finished reading the decision, and I may stumble upon something outlandish.  I’ll point it out if I do.

David Codrea says that he doesn’t cede the decision whether we have a right to bear arms to the Ninth Circuit.  Properly so.  God gives it to me, and what God gives me, no court can take away.  But for the trashy decisions handed down by the Ninth Circuit, this one is surprising and delightful to read (so far).  And I do like their focus on the historical context of the constitution rather than on what judges have to say about it from their ivory tower perches today.

For more reading on this subject, see my Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense.

David Codrea:

Regardless, the outcome of one case hardly justifies unfounded allegations of a Jim Crow-based trend, and what’s quickly obvious is a clumsily transparent agenda to equate defensive gun use with white racism against blacks.

Well, we’ve seen how the progressives like to hurl insults rather than debate rationally.  I see “stand your ground” laws as fairly simple, actually.  Anyone who understands self defense, whether by hand, knife, gun or any other weapon, would tell you that you cannot assume that you have time to escape.  My philosophy has always been evasion, escape and egress.  But there are times when that will not work to ameliorate the threat.  During those times, immediate reaction should be your plan.  Turning and running is sure to get you killed.  That has nothing whatsoever to do with race.  You will also get killed if you try to run from very bad white guys.

Kurt Hofmann:

The Department of Justice will inevitably claim that the nullification section of the law is unconstitutional, pushing the issue to the courts. Who can say what will happen there, but few would argue that it will be easy to get the courts to back the states in breaking the federal government’s grip on the power it has usurped over a period of well over a century.

This is more necessary reading by Kurt.  As I’ve argued as well, “although if it goes to federal court and is overturned (as it would certainly be in federal court), then it was never really a nullification law at all.  Federal court rulings would have to be ignored in order to meet the definition of a nullification law.”  We must be willing to throw federal agents into State Penitentiaries with the general prison population and throw away the key.

Mike Vanderboegh is discussing his work against Communist Mike Lawlor and how remarks by Robert Farago don’t quite measure up.  Look, I have nothing against Robert, but I find him to be a rather strange bird.  The  e-mails I have exchanged with him eventually found Robert offering to let me write for TTAG as long as they got exclusive rights to the content for the first 48 hours (or some time), while he also seemed very reluctant to link and comment on anything I write on my own web site.  I cannot possibly answer why he took this position.  As I said, it seems rather odd to me.

Robert says of the Connecticut situation, “No matter how you look at it, this will not end well.”  Oh, I’m not so sure about that.  Perhaps I will begin praying imprecatory prayers against Mike Lawlor.  Perhaps the collectivists in Connecticut will back down.  Perhaps this will become a toothless law.  Perhaps the first shooting or imprisonment of a gun owner will bring the house down on law enforcement in Connecticut.  I can think of a number of good outcomes.

In Idaho, “Republicans resurrected a measure to punish Idaho law enforcement officers who help confiscate federally banned firearms, fearing President Barack Obama’s administration could try to take their guns … Hagedorn says this year’s measure is “much friendlier” to law enforcement, though it calls for a civil penalty of $1,000 for those found guilty.”  A fine is “weak tea” for a true nullification law.

Attention in Kansas is focused down the food chain rather than the other direction.  “A Kansas House committee is taking up legislation stripping cities and counties of any power to regulate guns or block the open carrying of firearms.”

Finally, a bill has made its way through the Senate in Missouri (again) on nullification.  “Missouri senators endorsed legislation on Tuesday that seeks to nullify U.S. gun restrictions and send federal agents to jail for enforcing such laws, though the measure would likely face a court challenge if it gets approved in the state.”

This is just as I’ve recommended (State prison time for federal agents), although if it goes to federal court and is overturned (as it would certainly be in federal court), then it was never really a nullification law at all.  Federal court rulings would have to be ignored in order to meet the definition of a nullification law.

But now from the factual to the comical.  If you live in one of these states or if you endorse such an idea, Adam Weinstein thinks you’re a redneck.

Since the time of John Calhoun in South Carolina, nullification doctrine—the fancy-bred, college-educated stepbrother of those mental deficients, the militia and sovereign citizen movements—has held that America’s several states have the right to nullify federal laws that infringe on their constitutional liberties. Unless we’re talking about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment rights of minorities in these nullificationist states, in which case their freedom is totally treading on our freedom, dude.

But no matter. Liberty-loving bears of small brain have found a five-syllable word, and it must necessarily lead to their promised land. Kansas and Alaska have already passed gun nullification laws, while Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Missouri have been pushing. Nine states, led by Montana, have passed laws asserting that gunmakers in their states are exempt from federal regulations, and so they can make all the full-auto machine guns and assault weapons they want.

The real fun comes when local politicians and law enforcement officers get in the nullification game: Nearly 250 sheriffs from Oregon to California to Arizona to Minnesota have written open letters defying federal gun laws and threatening to arrest U.S. government officials working in their jurisdictions. One rural Florida sheriff even beat prosecution last fall for releasing (and destroying evidence related to) a suspect who’d illegally held a concealed weapon.

It’s fun times in America when libertarians and John Birchers are openly praising law enforcement officers for picking and choosing which laws they’ll enforce, you know, to protect the good, law-abiding folk from federal interference. What could go wrong?

Right after that are pictures of blacks being brutalized over civil rights protests.  What else would you expect out of Gawker, right?  A false analogy between civil rights and a supposed right to take weapons away from the citizens, eh, so what?

To Adam, it’s all about invoking emotion rather than making any kind of rational argument.  It’s okay if the argument is self defeating because Adam happened to ignore the fact that gun owners are fighting for their rights too.  As long as Adam can hurl an insult, it was a good day.

One commenter makes the following remark:

Yes, they’ve been trying this on every law they don’t like

They should all be informed that the FBI will be paying them a visit, with swat (sic) teams if necessary should they pull this.

It’s reall (sic) time we joined the civilized world and eliminated state government. They’re always howling that were one nation under god. Well, one nation has one set of laws. At the same time we remove gerrymandering. Put in place huge restrictions with huge penalties to, (sic) prevent it happening again. And add additional senators to strip the power of the rednecks to obstruct and abuse.

The south (sic) was never punished for the civil war. Hardly a man even was out on probation for their treason, and that’s why we have the problems we have today. It’s a good tine to start. And it’s a better time to stop,folimf (sic) lawsuits, and arrest, arrest, arrest.

Another commenter remarks:

I guarantee you that these are the same knuckleheads that also vote for laws that allow teachers to lead prayers in schools under the guise of “freedom from religious persecution.”

Concerning the second commenter, not necessarily.  For instance, I strongly advocate home schooling (partially) in order to avoid indoctrination into statist, collectivist thinking like yours.  You never got the chance to decide on prayer in my school and I didn’t have to convince your ilk of anything.  I had my own school.

Concerning the first commenter, this is a bit more serious.  He is unabashedly advocating open, unmitigated war.  I never did and still do not believe that firearms owners or patriots will fire the first shot.  But if the second is fired in self defense, it won’t be just one shot by one person.

And it won’t come from just one gun.  The commenter may want to reconsider armchair generalship, and think hard about issuing orders he wouldn’t obey himself because he is a coward, while he sends tens of thousands of men to their deaths.  To be sure, it would be a bloody war.  The collectivists are advised to consider the costs.

The State:

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she backs a proposal that would make it legal for most South Carolinians to carry guns – concealed or in the open – without a permit or the training that the state currently requires.

Haley made her comments after she signed into law a bill that allows gun owners with licenses to carry concealed weapons into businesses that serve alcohol – restaurants and bars – as long as they do not drink alcohol and the businesses did not bar guns.

After signing the restaurant and bar bill, Haley said she backs a pending state Senate bill, called the “Constitutional Carry Act,” that would eliminate the state’s current permitting and training requirements for citizens who wish to carry firearms.

“Criminals are dangerous, and I think that every resident should be allowed to protect themselves from criminals,” Haley said when asked by The State to respond to some state senators’ fears that doing away with the permitting and training requirements could threaten the public.

State Sen. Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, the chief sponsor of the constitutional-carry proposal, says the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to carry firearms without any government restrictions.

However, it is unlikely Bright’s bill will pass this year. It faces significant opposition in the Senate and still must clear the Senate committee where it nearly died last week.

Perhaps this won’t happen this year.  But if this manages to make it out of committee and on to the floor for a vote, someone may have to remind the Governor of her promise – you know, just in case she was posturing because she thought she would never really have to sign such a bill into law.

Emily Miller:

President Obama is using every executive power in his arsenal to infringe on Second Amendment rights.

His latest maneuver is to nominate a rabidly anti-gun doctor to be the next U.S. surgeon general. Dr. Vivek Murthy is facing Senate approval in upcoming weeks.

Dr. Murthy is the 36-year-old president and co-founder of Doctors for America, a group that advocates for Obamacare and gun control laws.

The group calls gun violence “a public health crisis.” It pushes for Congress to ban “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines and calls for spending tax dollars for more gun-control research.

The organization also lobbies for doctors to be allowed to ask patients, including minors, whether they have legal guns in the home. If the patient admits to having guns, Dr. Murthy wants doctors to “counsel them appropriately about safety measures.”

Gun rights advocates and many families view this policy as a violation of privacy.

At a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last week, Sen. Lamar Alexander asked Dr. Murthy about public comments on firearms, such as a tweet from before the 2012 president election that said, “Tired of politicians playing politics w/ guns, putting lives at risk b/c they’re scared of NRA. Guns are a health care issue.”

The problem is that Mr. Murthy isn’t a real doctor.  He may have passed his boards, but that doesn’t mean anything.  I know a few engineers who passed the engineering boards and who are a hazard to the safety and health of the public because they’re incompetent.

Mr. Murthy hasn’t spent his life like my family physician, diagnosing prostate cancer and high blood pressure, dealing with the health issues men and women face, watching the elderly die in his care, and working a full day at the office only to work until midnight at home because of the obscene Obamacare paperwork (like my doctor does) our totalitarian president has heaped upon him.

I’ve explained what I would do with one of these doctors who ask questions with which they have no business, but that sidesteps the real issue here.  The issue is that if Mr. Murthy was a real doctor he would treat patients and sit by their bedside as they pass away, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, or some form of cancer.

Mr. Murthy is just another collectivist who looks exactly like the one who nominated him.  We know his stripe, we’ve seen a thousand just like him in this administration.  In the end it doesn’t matter what post he holds or doesn’t hold.  He will pass from the world having done no good for mankind, in spite of the title “doctor.”  He will not weep over patients, he will not cure disease, he will not pray over their suffering.  He has sold his soul.

Guns ‘n’ Freedom:

CafeMom:

My DH suffers from OAB (Overactive Bladder) due to past problems with prostate cancer. (He is only 36 by the way and has been done with it for 3 years) We fly frequently and to be safe he usually wears a disposable brief (an adult diaper). He has been screened many times with the full body scanner and patted down many other times. On a few occasions, if he was being patted down, he has mentioned his “protection” and passed without further scrutiny.

Never an issue until last week. While waiting in the security line he had a strong bladder spasm and and a large release of urine into the diaper. After he emerged from the scanner the TSA officer (a female) asked if he was carrying liquids in his clothing. He explained his condition and what had happened. In the past, it was embarrassing enough for him to just tell a TSA employee that I was wearing an adult incontinence garment but now he was also announcing that he had wet himself.) She called over to another (male) officer (the boss, I guess) and  explained the situation to him out loud in front of everyone else still going through the line. The problem was he did not understand what an “incontinence product” was when she told him.

You’re not surprised, are you?  I’ve told you so before.  The TSA is full of ignorant goobers and child molesters.  It’s a federal jobs program for idiots who cannot find productive work.  It is nothing more than Kabuki theater to make the morons among us feel safe.

David Codrea:

A response from ATF implied that ATF had no intention of posting comments it felt did not meet all of its criteria, including those not accompanied by a complete mailing address. Even so, comment suppression appears to extend beyond that.

I wish I could say that this surprises me, but it doesn’t.  My experience is that the federal regulators can be treated as a monolith.  From the ATF to the EPA, DOE, DoJ and so on, not a single agency really cares about your comments.  They find you to be a nuisance.

Kurt Hofmann:

Illegal drug activity or not, though, Magee has a fundamental human right to protect himself and his pregnant girlfriend from violent, armed home invaders, and Magee’s claim that that is precisely what he thought was happening apparently convinced the grand jury.

Oddly, in another recent story, we are told that the purpose of “no-knock” raids is “officer safety,” after a SWAT team raided an Ankeny, Iowa house (on suspicion of credit card fraud, of all things …

The police aren’t interested in the safety of citizens.  If they were they would achieve their ends by doing good detective work and arresting perpetrators when there is no danger to themselves or the citizens.  They want to be Soldier-boys who dress up and go shooting and wear cool gear and stuff.  And the only thing I have to prove to a jury is that in an age of home invaders dressing in LEO uniforms and yelling “Police,” I have no way to ascertain who the invaders are.  The only way I have to keep my family safe is to assume that they are criminals.  And LEOs who do this are in fact criminals, even if Judges approve of their actions.

Take a look at Mike Vanderboegh’s recent entry on Mike Lawless (um, excuse me, Mike Lawlor).  Do you think the KGB will show an interest?  With Mike’s relentless attention to this ne’er do well, perhaps it will begin to make a dent in the armor of the collectivists.  After all, light scatters the darkness.

From Uncle, this piece on whether there is a 9mm that matches the ballistics of a .45.  Um, sorry, but I’m a registered professional engineer.  Give me the data, and I’ll apply Newton to the information.  And it will fail the test.  I am not invoking a 9mm versus .45 debate here, but don’t tell me that they’re the same thing (not that Uncle is trying to do that).  They’re not.