NY Daily News:

In my “Albany Insider” column today, I wrote how Tom King, the head of the state Rifle & Pistol Association, was critical of the increasingly angry and inflammatory rhetoric at pro-gun rallies. King said he fears that the ugliness that has popped up at the rallies is actually hurting the pro-gun cause. He also said it’s time to stop the rallies, arguing that they won’t result in a repeal of the SAFE Act. He wants to instead focus on trying to get the law struck down in the court …

I won’t post his silly letter, but I thought it would be appropriate to highlight this paragraph.

Fellow gun owners I submit this to you for your consideration. We will never convert the 22% rabid anti-gunners, we don’t have to convert the 32% avid pro gunners but we must convert a sizable portion of the 46% of those somewhere in between if we want to retain our 2nd Amendment Rights long term. These are the soccer moms, the guys who say I’ve never shot a gun but would like to try it and the people worried about their safety. How do we do that? Not by standing on stage screaming obscenities at Cuomo and certainly at large rallies where people stand on stage, pound their chest and tell the attendees to prepare for war. That frightens the very people we want to attract to our side, the people who will insure (sic) 2nd Amendment Rights for our grandchildren.

As a sidebar comment, the people he wants to attract will not insure (sic) 2nd amendment rights for our grandchildren.  But second, this letter is as  emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the NRA as I’ve ever seen.  It’s the perfect example of how not to think about our rights.

The strategy he advocates is why we’re where we are, among other reasons like loss of our national moral conscience.  He wants first to turn to the black robes, and failing that (as it certainly will fail and has already failed), he wants to turn to popular opinion.

Like so many other NRA board members, he wants to be oh-so-respectable and loved by the people.  Don’t appear extreme and scary, says he.  Never mind the warnings that should be issued to the collectivists should they continue with their pursuit of confiscation and onerous laws and harassment.  Never mind that they could be declaring war as an unintended consequence of their lust for power.  Don’t be scary to the people we want to persuade.

I rarely cite polls or popular opinion because while they may matter to the exigencies of my life, they don’t matter to my rights.  I have weapons because God gives me the right to own weapons, not the second amendment.  The opinions of the people are as subject to the vicissitudes of ideology as the times in which they live, and the mind of man cannot be entrusted with the rights of mankind.  If Mr. King is placing his trust in the people, he is building his house on sand.

My rights are what they are by divine pronouncement.  It is righteous to own guns because it reflects the character of the Almighty.  Without this I’m no different than the statist thugs and collectivists who want to disarm me, except we happen to be on different sides of an issue.  It means everything … everything … to be right and righteous.

Until the NRA board of directors is as convinced of the foundations of their rights as I am, they will be a weak and neutered organization, fit for nothing much except a good magazine once a month.

UPDATE. David Codrea links some history on this.  Jacob is a real piece of work.  Come on into my house, Jacob, and let’s throw down.  I’ll call you out for being the sorry, pathetic, collectivist piss ant you are.  Or did I already just do that?

Kurt Hofmann:

It’s more than plausible that of the portion that would not be shipped overseas, at least some would end up in killers’ hands here in the U.S., available for appalling mayhem. Why, after all, would an arms smuggler just sit on the weapons, which would thus not be making him any money, and would instead just expose him to the risk of arrest and prosecution?

Does anyone think that had that indeed happened, Yee would not attempt to exploit the ensuing carnage as justification for more “gun control”?

Well, it seems to be the collectivist’s modus operandi.

David Codrea:

Case in point, since OSHA is mentioned as a possible catalyst in Thursday’s Bozeman raid by other agencies, this column warned back in 2009 that Obama’s pick to head the agency, David Michaels, was strongly anti-gun and committed to using regulatory schemes to get his way. At the time of his nomination, this column advocated organized opposition, including scoring confirmation votes against gun group ratings and contacting the appropriate Senate committee, even reminding readers of Michaels’ organizational connections with George Soros (himself a backer of draconian international citizen disarmament efforts).

I’ve warned you about the executive branch of the government and legislating by federal register notice.  This is a corollary.  They send the regulators in and fine you, shut you down, and make it impossible to do business.  They may even send an armed team after you for breaking the rules they wrote without the consent of the Congress.

Visit Mike Vanderboegh’s Crisis City for a view of where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

PTR makes its first rifles in South Carolina.  If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times.  Smith & Wesson, Rock River Arms, Remington, Mossberg … what are you waiting for?

Some genius named Rachel Stella is asking about Georgia’s new law, and whether it’s okay to have guns on God’s property.  I’m in favor of guns on God’s property, and oh, by the way, the posing of the question assumes a chasm between the sacred and secular.  The Psalmist says that the “cattle on a thousand hills belong to God” (Psalm 50:10), or in other words, we’re just stewards.  He owns everything.  So that about covers it for me.  Guns everywhere.

WRSA likes this machine gun (details here).  My experience (attempting to exchange email among other things) is that H&K has a rather elitist attitude.  Furthermore, like so many firearms manufacturers, they make many of their weapons systems only for military and law enforcement.

Okay, nice machine gun.  But here is a fact which bears mentioning.  American engineering is second to none.  Things like open bolt versus closed bolt, mechanisms to cool the gun, head spacing, spring constants, gas operation design, component materials (among many others) are all variables that can be used by entrepreneurial engineers and gunsmiths to design a better weapon.

Do you want to know why that doesn’t happen in America?  There is no incentive.  The largest gun market in America is civilian, and as you know the manufacture and sale of newly designed or built fully automatic weapons has been illegal to anyone except LEOs since the abomination called the Hughes Amendment.

William J. Hughes was a democrat from New Jersey in case you were wondering.

CBS-DC:

A University of Virginia student is seeking $40 million from the state and seven Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who arrested her believing she had illegally purchased beer when she had bought bottled water.

Elizabeth K. Daly, 21, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, according to media reports. She alleges malicious prosecution, six counts of assault and battery and failure to appropriately train ABC agents.

On April 11, 2013, ABC agents confronted Daly outside a supermarket in Charlottesville. The agents believed Daly, who was then 20, was under the legal drinking age and had purchased beer.

Daly was charged with two felonies for grazing two agents with her vehicle.

Daly has said attempted to flee in a panic because the agents weren’t in uniform, one pulled a gun and another attempted to smash a window with a flashlight.

Daly spent a night in jail on felony charges of assaulting two law enforcement officers and eluding police. Prosecutors withdrew charges against Daly in June and her record was expunged in October.

In her lawsuit, Daly said she has suffered from a tremor in her right hand, intense anxiety and other problems since the confrontation.

As a result of the April 2013 incident, Daly and her parents “have incurred significant legal, medical, and other costs, and will continue to do so in the future due to the malicious, intentional” and negligent actions of the defendants, the lawsuit states.

A spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring called the incident “incredibly unfortunate.”

Here is the summary.  Virginia ABC agents in plains clothes brandished a weapon at an innocent victim and attempted to smash the window of an automobile, endangering the driver (and any occupants that might have been there) of lifelong blindness from shards of glass, all over what they thought was a beer.  And the court officer notes this incident as being “unfortunate.”

Here is a modest proposal in an attempt to ameliorate the police state we have become.  Every law enforcement officer, federal, state, county and local, in America wears a camera beginning immediately.  The camera will be worn at all times when on duty by those who interact with the public (including LEOs from SWAT officers on to uniformed patrol), and failure to wear the camera will entail loss of job and deprivation of licenses issued by the state (such as driver’s license, hunting license, firearms license, etc.).

The video will be streamed to an independent third party, who releases the video upon request to any victim or his lawyer, and posts video of all violent encounters.  Law enforcement officers can then be held accountable for the same crimes we would be, namely brandishing, assault, denial of constitutional rights, lying under oath, and any of a host of other crimes.

It would be a start.

WSJ Law Blog:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday bolstered federal efforts to keep guns away from domestic abusers, ruling that even a misdemeanor conviction involving minimal force can trigger a ban on firearm possession.

A Tennessee man argued that his misdemeanor conviction for causing “bodily injury” to the mother of his child shouldn’t bar him from keeping guns because it wouldn’t qualify as a violent crime under other federal statutes.

The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the nature of domestic violence justified stricter efforts to prevent conflict between intimate partners from turning deadly.

“’Domestic violence’ is not merely a type of ‘violence’; it is a term of art encompassing acts that one might not characterize as ‘violent’ in a nondomestic context,” she wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

Justice Department documents say most forms of domestic violence are “relatively minor and consist of pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. While those might not be serious offenses in other situations, things are different in the home, she continued.

“The accumulation of such acts over time can subject one intimate partner to the other’s control,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. Moreover, she observed, traditionally battery was defined as any “offensive touching,” whether or not it caused physical injury.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote separately, agreeing with the outcome in Wednesday’s case but calling for a narrower definition of “physical force” that excluded “the slightest unwanted touching” and similarly minor offenses.

Does anyone else consider it rather creepy that the SCOTUS justices are writing things down about “unwanted touching?”  You’d better mind your p’s and q’s in the future if your children go to any of the public communist schools.

One report about a spanking might bring the SWAT teams down on your home.  And I’m sure that no man will feel like he is being targeted just because he is a man.  That certainly won’t happen.  And I’m sure false reports won’t be filed.  And I’m sure the local courts will be more than amenable to vacating bad judgment on the part of the local LEOs.  After all, they’ve always been on our side in the past, no?

Remember when I asked this question?

When will you be adjudicated mentally defective because you believe that being armed is the surest way to ameliorate tyranny in America?

Now we know the answer.  Via Uncle, The Washington Post:

[Plaintiffs allege that, as] of February 3, 2011, Plaintiffs possessed FOID cards, owned firearms, and kept their firearms in their home. At some point before February 3, 2011, David expressed “unpopular political views … about his support of Second Amendment rights” to “a locally elected official.” That official, somebody in that official’s office, or one of the individual defendants falsely construed David’s comments “as evidence that [he] had a mental condition that made him dangerous.” On February 3, 2011, [Illinois State Police] Lieutenant [John] Coffman wrote a letter to David revoking his FOID card under § 8(f) of the Act based on the false and unreasonable assertion that David had a “mental condition” within the meaning of that provision.

On February 5, 2011, with Lieutenant Coffman’s approval, Agents Pryor and Summers entered Plaintiffs’ home without a warrant or consent, conducted a search, and seized Plaintiffs’ firearms, which Plaintiffs used for personal protection, hunting, investment, and enjoyment …

Simply because local LEOs wanted to, the Plaintiffs had their weapons confiscated, and the LEOs ignored constitutional protections regarding illegal search and seizure.  The case has to do with residents of Illinois, but it could be anywhere.

Now someone spend the time and expend the effort to explain to me how mental health checks are going to keep guns out of the hands of “dangerous criminals.”  Go ahead.  I’m listening.

AJC.com:

The content of HB 60, the omnibus gun bill passed by the Legislature last Thursday, is finally available online and in hard copy at the state Capitol.

Two areas are likely to spark some controversy. First, there’s a requirement that holders of concealed weapons permits must have that license on their persons when they carry. Which is immediately followed by the caveat that cops aren’t allowed to stop anyone solely to check for that permit:

(a) Every license holder shall have his or her valid weapons carry license in his or her immediate possession at all times when carrying a weapon, or if such person is exempt from having a weapons carry license pursuant to Code Section 16-11-130 or subsection (c) of Code Section 16-11-127.1, he or she shall have proof of his or her exemption in his or her immediate possession at all times when carrying a weapon, and his or her failure to do so shall be prima-facie evidence of a violation of the applicable provision of Code Sections

(b) A person carrying a weapon shall not be subject to detention for the sole purpose of investigating whether such person has a weapons carry license.

Howard Sills, sheriff of Putnam County, noted the language as the bill passed last week:

“Then there is one sentence, and it destroys everything, ” Sills said.

That one sentence says police may not detain anyone to demand to see a weapons permit. That means, Sills said, that if someone is walking down the street late at night with a pistol stuck in his waistband, police may not stop him and ask to see his weapons permit.

I don’t have much to say about this except notice the sleight of hand by the CLEO.  What the proposed law says is that you must have your permit with you, and then they made it clear that there will be no “stop and identify” authority.

As it is now, Georgia is a stop and identify state (with some form of law intended for loitering).  They are undoing that.  That has no bearing on the issue of permits, and the CLEO knows it.  He knows that he told a lie when he said one sentence “destroys everything.”

Uncle discusses a judge discussing the ATF making crime their mission instead of doing their job:

The time has come to remind the Executive Branch that the Constitution charges it with law enforcement — not crime creation. A reverse-sting operation like this one transcends the bounds of due process and makes the Government the oppressor of its people.

To LEOs, I told you so.

It’s what Mike Vanderboegh calls losing the mandate of heaven.  At one time in our history, constables were respected and admired.  Children wanted to talk to them, show them respect, and even be like them.  Nowadays, with enough rifles pointed at women and children while screaming obscenities, with enough dead animals, with enough abuse and danger from cops, it may not be long before the people turn on cops.  If you’re a cop, you don’t want that to happen.  Believe me.  You don’t want that to happen.  You want to maintain the “mandate of heaven.”  If you lose it, you’ve lost everything.

Mike Vanderboegh believes that Chris Christie is playing Russian Roulette with his presidential aspirations with this potential magazine ban.  I don’t think so.  Wait until Chris Christie attempts to play his loud mouth, overbearing, schoolyard bully routine down South, say in South Carolina or Alabama, where we don’t get into meddling jerks bossing us around.  Chris Christie will never be president, regardless of what he does in New Jersey.

Mike Vanderboegh relates RI state senator Josh Miller winning friends and influencing people.  To gun owners, he says, Go fuck yourself.

Kurt Hofmann:

Perhaps surprisingly, in 2005, both chambers of the Illinois legislature introduced HB 477/SB 44, the “Gun-free Zone Criminal Conduct Liability Act,” and this legislation was far from toothless …

There’s no “perhaps.”  I’m shocked, really.  If someone would have asked me when Illinois would have a provision like this, I would have said “not in my lifetime.”  I would have been wrong.

Infowars (Alex Jones’ outfit) has to be taken with a grain of salt, or several grains of salt, and routinely ignored unless they have hard evidence for their assertions (and given that they don’t do analysis of said evidence because their analysis is routinely faulty).  But this time they have a zinger.  The Department of Homeland Security is targeting Americans.  We all knew that anyway, but this adds detail to the charges because there is a leaked DHS document

The document (PDF) was leaked by an individual affiliated with Stewart Rhodes’ Oathkeepers organization and passed on to Infowars. It is entitled National Exercise Program – Capstone Exercise 2014 – Scenario Ground Truth.

The document is intended for “U.S. Department of Homeland Security Trusted Agents Only” and is “disseminated only on a
need-to-know basis.” Even the role players involved in the exercise itself are prohibited from seeing the files.

The exercise is designed to evaluate readiness in preparation for a catastrophic incident, natural disaster or major act of terrorism. Some of the scenarios which will be in play during the exercise include a series of earthquakes, tsunamis and a nuclear weapons accident.

On page 125 of the document, a scenario is outlined whereby a group calling itself “Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny” responds to “The U.S. Northern Command mission of Defense Support to Civil Authorities” (or the imposition of martial law) by launching a protest campaign on social media and potentially engaging in cyber attacks.

The scenario goes on to suspect members of North Command of being sympathetic to the cause of opposition to socialist tyranny.  This document is remarkable for a number of reasons, but let’s rehearse just a few.

First of all, as I’ve observed before, while the DHS, Northern Command and all sorts of other armed agents in the service of the rulers think they are with the “in” crowd, they aren’t.  The effete, entitled, elitist sophisticates see them as Neanderthals.  Brutish and evil, but a necessary evil if the state is to function to maintain two classes of people.  To the rulers the gun-toting, government paid troopers are knuckle-dragging monkeys who do their bidding.  The rulers don’t love them or even like them.

Second, this is what happens when so-called “conservatives” create unnecessary and bloated government programs like the DHS.  Socialists like Obama put layer upon layer on top of those government programs to ensure power in perpetuity.  It’s best not to create those government programs – ever.

Third, notice the paranoia.  There are patriots who disagree with socialism, and they are the enemy.  Worse still, there are those in Northern Command who – gasp – might just agree with them.  The threat isn’t the Taliban, or al Qaeda, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Chinese, or the Russians.  The real threat is inside of America, and not only that, but inside of the DHS and military structure as well.

Fourth, notice what the disagreement is over: government control, which not coincidentally is what the original America revolution was about.  One wonders if that irony is lost on the morons who created this scenario.

Fifth, this is apparently what happens when a large, bored land army has nothing more to do, at least, one who has lost its moral bearings.  They begin to worry over things like stability operations in the homeland, about internal threats, and about ludicrous scenarios like “extremist militias” taking over the government of Darlington, South Carolina.

Finally, this is simply as creepy as I can imagine.  We pay people good wages to watch us, to investigate us, to spy on us, and to monitor our comings and goings.  Forgive an engineer’s perspective on this, but it seems to me that these folks ought to be earning a technical degree and making a better widget.  Thus would they be adding to theirs wealth and the wealth of others.  But they’re not.  They are parasites on Americans, the very ones they are supposed to watch.

Just like local LEOs who behave abusively towards the people, they are in danger of losing the “mandate of heaven.”  When they do, they will have lost everything because the respect of the people is tied to moral certitude and justification.  To folks in the DHS and Northern Command, think hard about those things.  Those ideas have visitation with you and haunt you in the future.

In what must certainly make her parents proud, Hannah Sparks recently wrote Guns are bad, m’kay?  There isn’t time enough to address all of the inconsistencies and misrepresentations in the commentary, but one egregious error stands out.

Run-of-the-mill governmental corruption aside, the gun lobby wields its power in more insidious, blatantly harmful ways. One of its worst tactics is stymieing government research into gun violence from a public health perspective. The lobby’s first target was the National Center for Injury Control and Prevention, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was conducting important data collection on gun violence in the mid-1990s.

Members of Congress allied with the gun lobby altered funding for the CDC in a way that explicitly prevented it from advocating for gun control. Recently, the National Institutes for Health has gotten similar treatment from Congressional Republicans for similar research. Funding for studies by public institutions like these is all but dry, and private researchers just can’t do the same kind of work as the CDC and NIH do.

Idiot Representative Keith Ellison sings the same tune in his recent interview with idiot Bill Maher.  We’ve discussed this before, the notion that the gun lobby is preventing anything from happening concerning studies.

All the gun lobby managed to do is prevent your and my tax dollars from going to such research.  The country is broke and we certainly can’t find a better way to cut wasteful spending.

As for the fact that “private researchers just can’t do the same kind of work as the CDC,” that’s just too damn bad.  If there is a market for it, private industry or private individuals will find a way to fund it.  Either way, you have a right to tax me for the common defense and building roads and bridges to enable interstate commerce.  Beyond that, I see no constitutional basis for confiscation of my wealth for any government program.

For Hannah, don’t use words like m’kay in the title line.  It evokes visions of stupid, gum-chomping girls.