John Jay has created a functioning plywood gun.  No, seriously.

David Codrea:

Agreeing with federal prosecutors, U.S. District Court Judge David Bury ruled on Friday that testimony regarding guns tied to Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” will be barred from the murder trial of the two men accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Per KVOA News 4 Tucson, the jury “will not hear any details of how two guns found at the murder scene were part of a U.S. government-sanctioned weapon program.”

Mike Vanderboegh in Trump being a Charlatan (or Mike citing Jack Kelly).  Well of course he is.  He’s also an egomaniac, believer in a single payer health system, and has promised to bring all the Mexicans back across the border “legally” just as soon as they go home (which of course means that you would take care of those little Hispanic babies until they are 85 years old, just legally rather than illegally).  And he has a squirrel on his head.

Remington’s problems aren’t over yet.  I told you so.  I told you the better thing to do would have been to acknowledge the problems and recalled the Walker Fire Control System.  But then the lawyers and corporate executives got involved.

He left camp without survival gear or the proper clothing.  As we’ve discussed many times before, don’t be that guy.

Fox News:

In a mixed decision, a federal appeals court on Friday struck down as unconstitutional several strict gun registration laws in the nation’s capital, but upheld other restrictions aimed at public safety.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that the city cannot ban gun owners from registering more than one pistol per month or require owners to re-register a gun every three years. The court also invalidated requirements that owners make a personal appearance to register a gun and pass a test about firearms laws.

But the court upheld other parts of the law, such as requiring that so-called long guns — including rifles and shotguns — be registered along with handguns. The ruling also allows gun owners to be fingerprinted and photographed, pay certain fees and complete a firearms safety training course.

In all, the court upheld six gun laws and struck down four.

The District of Columbia put the registration laws in place after a landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision that struck down a 32-year-old handgun ban in the District of Columbia. The high court ruled in that case the Second Amendment protects handgun possession for self-defense in the home.

A federal judge had previously upheld all the new registration laws.

District of Columbia officials argued that the laws were aimed at preserving gun owners’ constitutional rights while also protecting the community from gun violence.

But writing for the appeals court majority, Judge Douglas Ginsburg said some of the laws did not pass constitutional muster. He rejected, for example, the city’s argument that the one-pistol-per-month rule would reduce illegal trafficking in weapons.

“The suggestion that a gun trafficker would bring fewer guns into the District because he could not register more than one per month there lacks the support of experience and of common sense,” Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Ronald Regan, was joined by Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, named to the court President George H. W. Bush, dissented in part, saying she would have upheld all the registration laws. She said the majority should have shown more deference to public officials trying to create a workable firearms policy.

Besides the always salient point about turning to the black robed tyrants to legitimize your rights, take particular note again of that last sentence (bold mine).  Henderson wanted for a court, who’s sole job it is to find constitutionality of laws – to show deference to “officials trying to create a workable firearms policy.”

Let me see.  A workable firearms policy might go something like this.  It’s none of your damn business who has guns or what kind they have.  How is that, Ms. Henderson?  Does that help you?

David Codrea:

So much for phony polls with loaded questions designed to produce predetermined propaganda campaign results. So much for social media, where the Bloomberg-funded and promoted hashtag #groceriesnotguns has only been used about a dozen times so far this month. Maybe having “snot” in their message wasn’t the best tactic.

Yea, we already knew that the AstroTurfers make up stuff.  I had previously noted that “Moms” had petitioned in a Harris Teeter parking lot (Kroger owns Harris Teeter) – all four or five of them – and I said:

Harris Teeter doesn’t want this fight.  There are far too many of us and they don’t want to lose the business.  So I recommend that you go somewhere you’re wanted and leave the Harris Teeter parking lots free for folks who want to shop there.

The “Moms” were never going to win.  This is the South, girls.  Go home.

NJ.com:

Gov. Chris Christie’s gradual pivot away from the gun control policies he had advocated as New Jersey governor took its sharpest turn yet Sunday evening on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

The governor and Republican presidential candidate, while fielding questions from a town hall meeting, took sole credit for keeping the Second Amendment “alive” in New Jersey, which is he said is home to “some of the worst gun laws in America” despite his office voicing support for the state’s firearm laws well before he launched his presidential bid.

“The problem with guns in this country are criminals. Everything we need to make you safer is already on the books and then some,” Christie said.

“If you go to the person that’s in charge of the New Jersey Pistol and Gun Club, what he’ll tell you is the only reason that the Second Amendment is still alive in New Jersey is because I’ve been governor for the last six years,” he said.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight you collectivist windbag.  No one is safer because of your laws because you won’t allow anyone to be legally armed in their own self defense.  God gives us the right to self defense, not the second amendment.  The second amendment applies to everyone and everywhere whether you exist or not.  Therefore, you can’t take credit for anything of the sort.  You will only answer for your own refusal to acknowledge men’s rights before God.  You have everything backwards.

But as for this notion of asking the “person in charge of the New Jersey Pistol and Gun Club” about this, I don’t believe you.  I think you’re a liar.  So I’ve taken it upon myself to contact them myself and I will publish any response I get.

I think you’re a liar and you never really talked to the “person in charge” of anything pertaining to gun rights.  And I don’t think that’s what they will say at all.

Prior: Chris Christie And Guns

In response to this piece Kris Paronto wrote me a nice note.  He’s playing the long game, and I think he knows that we’ll eventually find out the truth – all of it.  I’ll never tire of explaining as I have before that my military readers knew within 24 hours that this was the result of a well-planned, well-coordinated combined arms attack with the use of crew served weapons.  It was no spontaneous riot and it wasn’t an accident.  Again, we knew that virtually immediately, the administration talking points notwithstanding.

Now to what we’ve officially learned in the last several days.

On the third anniversary of the Benghazi terrorist attack, emails reviewed by Fox News raise significant questions about US government support for the secret shipment of weapons to the Libyan opposition.

During the Spring of 2011, as the Obama administration ramped up efforts to topple the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a licensed American arms dealer, Marc Turi, his business partner formerly with the CIA, senior US military officials in Europe and Africa as well as a former staffer for republican Senator John McCain considered logistics for arming the rebels, according to the emails exclusively obtained by Fox Business and Fox News.

Turi is facing federal trial this December on two counts that he allegedly violated the arms export control act by making false statements. Turi denies the charges, and alleges there was a rogue weapons operation run with the knowledge of Mrs. Clinton’s state department.

The email dated March 22, 2011 was sent by Admiral James Stavridis, when he was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, from his government email account to Turi’s business partner David Manners.

The email was also copied to General Carter Ham, then head of the defense department’s Africa command. Stavridis vouches for Manners as a United States Naval Academy classmate and “former CIA Officer with deep connections throughout the near Middle East.”

Also copied on the email is Mike Kostiw who worked for Senator John McCain until February 2011 on the Senate Armed Services committee. It is not known from the emails reviewed by Fox whether the parties responded, or whether others were brought into the discussion.

Stavridis tells Manners “The person in charge of the operation from a US DoD perspective is General Carter Ham, the commander of AFRICOM…Clearly, what you are describing is a State Department lead.”

General Ham headed the effort logistically, while the entire idea was sponsored by the State Department.  For his silence, General Ham was given a golden parachute.

I had previously said:

As to what I suspect – but cannot yet prove – the movement of weapons to terrorists was becoming hard to hide, and the whole operation had ripened to the point of rottenness.  Stevens had to be moved out and told to shut up about what he knew.  Even if the administration didn’t plan the military operation to take down the consulate at Benghazi, they nevertheless used it to hide their tracks.

The administration didn’t know how long the attack would last, and so there was certainly a QRF on the European continent that could have been sent, even if it turns out they would not have arrived in time to assist Stevens and the team with which you deployed, Kris.  Furthermore, there could also have been air assets within theater that were brought to bear, and perhaps even another QRF closer than Europe.

General Ham – who quietly went into the night with no explanation – knows something.  Leon Panetta knows something.  General Petraeus knows something.  No one is talking, but one day we will find out the truth of Benghazi, how a small team was left to perish because it was more expedient for the political life of the administration.  One day we will know.

That day inches ever forward.  Now I want to know where the QRF and air support was, and don’t tell me again that there wasn’t any except for a few Delta boys in Tripoli – it’s insulting.  As for the Obama administration, it’s criminals in clown cars all the way down.

First, a little background.

Arkansas’ attorney general said Friday that legal gun owners are free to openly carry or ride with their weapons but should be ready to field inquiries from law enforcement personnel wondering why they’re carrying.

Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge released an opinion Friday stating that law-abiding Arkansans are free to carry or possess their weapons on themselves or in their vehicles without fear of prosecution so long as they are not in a place where it is prohibited by law and they do not have an intent to “unlawfully” use the weapon.

Rutledge’s opinion has been expected by many, including Gov. Asa Hutchinson. It was requested in early June by three legislators who wanted to settle whether modifications to the state’s weapon-carry statute in 2013 made Arkansas an “open-carry” state — one that allows citizens to openly carry firearms without a license.

Because Rutledge’s opinion is nonbinding, it does not bar police from arresting citizens who open-carry, which has happened sporadically across the state over the past two years.

Ever diligent to make law themselves, the Bald Knob police have taken the AG’s opinion as a cue to harass peaceable citizens.

BALD KNOB, Ark. (KTHV) – A vague open-carry law in the state has one police department attempting to clarify it.

Bald Knob is cracking down on open-carry, trying to make a grey law more black and white. The Bald Knob Police Chief Erek Balentine is concerned that guns openly carried in stores and restaurants is too alarming to customers.

This concern over open-carry started in Bald Knob with the controversial arrest of Richard Chambless in May of this year.

Recently, the district court became the first in the state to find a guilty verdict for open-carry. Now the police department hopes one sign can help everyone feel safer.

“In this setting it needs to be relaxed. They are in a relaxed environment and shouldn’t have to fear if there’s ill intent or harm coming to them,” said Sharon Beauregerd, beautician at Cosmetology Career College. By federal law, no guns are allowed in this salon because it is a school. However, as a business owner who sells the skills she’s teaching, she wants to make this clear to customers. “If you come in open carrying, and I’ve got these students here, I’m going to protect them. I’m going to ask you to leave our facility.”

Bald Knob police have been helping area businesses prohibit guns.

“My job is to take action and protect the community. You can’t expect someone to obey something that not posted,” said Balentine who is offering signs to put on business fronts. Balentine said there are confusing regulations on where, when, and why you can carry a gun. “There’s no way to tell. He could be on the run for murder, be a felon.”

Note the article, which apparently accidentally tells the truth.  Rather than let the legislature clarify the law, which is their job, the police are attempting to do the same and expect the courts to back them up, an expectation upon which they can probably rely.

And notice what the police chief says.  This is all about how people feel, not real safety.  No felon on the run for murder open carries anywhere, but if they have a weapon they will conceal it.  But as long as it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.

Such is the simplistic psychology of the ignorant public, and such is the temptations of a badge, gun and court system to back it all up.  Cops can not only enforce the law, according to chief Balentine, they can make it too.

Houston Chronicle:

I own guns. I am a bird hunter, and I own shotguns for that purpose. I also own a single-action, six-shot revolver loaded with shotshells as protection against poisonous snakes on our small piece of land in the country, where copperheads are as common as mosquitoes. My father taught me to shoot guns responsibly before I was a teenager. I am teaching my kids to do the same.

I am also, like so many, appalled at the gun violence endemic in our country, violence amplified this past week by the on-air murder of two journalists …

Those opposed to any gun control claim that guns, as inanimate objects, don’t kill people. If one maintains that logic, then neither do automobiles kill people. But we regulate automobiles so law-abiding citizens are able to utilize them safely and not in ways that are likely to maim and kill. (As the father of a son approaching driving age, I’m particularly thankful for that.)

“And yet, driving is not a constitutional right, whereas gun ownership is,” some will say. Indeed, in recent Supreme Court decisions District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, the Court ruled that United States citizens have, under the Second Amendment, just such a right to own handguns in addition to long guns (like shotguns and rifles). Though I am a priest and certainly not a legal scholar, I was raised by a mother who is an English teacher, and I would argue that in its recent rulings the Supreme Court failed the grammar lesson.

[ … ]

Today, our militias consist of professional National Guards, not local Minute Men with a musket above the mantel. The right to bear arms is predicated (literally, grammatically) on a social institution that no longer exists.

[ … ]

As I said at the outset, I am a gun owner who keeps and uses specific kinds of firearms for the intentions for which they were constructed. That said, on the topic of gun violence, statistical and anecdotal evidence coincide. We indeed have a festering societal problem, and as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, I say we have moral problem. At least for those who follow the God of Jesus, a God whose vision for the world is that we “beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4), the gun violence in our country is a symptom of soul sickness. Something must be done to stem the tide, and an unfettered access to guns is no better solution than attempting to put out a fire with gasoline.

[ … ]

Why do we wish to own guns? Hunting, sporting, and home and/or personal protection seem to me to be the legitimate answers to the question. The guns I own are exactly adequate to those uses. (If I were a deer hunter, I would also own a deer rifle.) What is unneeded for any of these purposes is an assault rifle, or even a semi-automatic pistol with a high capacity magazine. Such weapons are designed for the sole and express purpose of incapacitating many people quickly, which is, lamentably in our broken world, the sometime responsibility of law enforcement and the military. It is virtually never — even in a home invasion situation — a circumstance legitimately faced by private citizens.

Personally, I favor prohibiting private ownership (not only sales) of assault rifles and other military-grade firearms and at least prohibiting sales of semi-automatic pistols with high capacity magazines.

To begin with Mr. Thompson, I consider your title to be preening and honorific rather than Biblical and pointing towards your responsibilities.  “Teaching elder” would do much better, but if you prefer to preen and your flock allows it, that says as much about them as it does you.

Next, I do have a number of questions for you.

First of all, I notice that you turn to a number of quotes from Supreme Court justices rather than time-honored and well-grounded Biblical exegesis concerning the duty of self defense (let’s dismiss your silly citation of Isaiah since this refers to the eschaton, and instead focus on Biblical scholarship).  Why is that?  Why would you prefer to refer to the opinions of man rather than of God?

Second, since it’s just a feasible to commit suicide with a shotgun, bolt action rifle or single shot revolver as it is with a semiautomatic pistol, do you see suicide from the aforementioned weapons to be acceptable and even preferable to those from the later?  Said another way, I’m going to go out on a limb and unequivocally state that no one has ever put the barrel of a single shot gun in his mount, pulled the trigger, and then done it again for good measure, as if having a semiautomatic would have made the job easier.

Third, why does an alleged teacher of the Bible diagnose a moral ailment and turn to the state for a solution rather than the shed blood of Jesus Christ and His salvific work on the cross?  Where in Scripture does it tell you that the state is a solution to the moral ailments of mankind?

Fourth, you say you want peace, but I assume you know that we won’t turn in our weapons peaceably.  So are you prepared for the SWAT team deaths in front yards all across America if the state follows your advice and outlaws semiautomatic firearms?  Are you prepared for blood running in the streets because of the civil war you want to start?

Fifth, you claim knowledge of home invasions and what it takes to repel them and save your family.  Has your home ever been invaded by a gang of armed criminals?

Finally, I notice that you don’t call for the disarming of police.  Have you ever read Dietrich Bonhoeffer?  What would you have done if the secret police had come for your peaceable neighbors in the middle of the night?  Would you have preferred to stick with your honorific title, “Very Reverend,” or would you have stood in the gap for the those who could not defend themselves?  What would you have done?  What will you do?  Who or what is your inspiration and from whence to you get your courage?

These are hard questions sir.  Think just as hard to answer them.  Bath your thoughts in prayer.  Turn to the Scriptures instead of the state.  Forsake worship of Baal and realize that men can never be the solution to the moral ailments that mankind created for himself.

David Codrea:

Back in 2007, Parker ran for the Virginia House of Delegates as a Democrat. At the time, Virginia Citizens Defense League, the state’s premiere grassroots gun rights group, sent its political questionnaire to all candidates. Their tally sheet shows no responses to the questions next to his listed name, which, per VCDL, “frequently indicates indifference, if not outright hostility, toward the right to keep and bear arms.”

Parker has a past, and David rehearses it well.  I suspect Parker isn’t really prepared to do “whatever it takes” to end our gun rights.  That would mean strapping on a pair, picking up a gun, and helping the SWAT teams as they perish on our front lawns trying to disarm Americans.  Parker doesn’t really believe we will give up peaceably, does he?

Keep praying for Mike Vanderboegh.

“No citizen should buy a gun to defend himself.”  Does that include LEOs too?

Mexican cartel influence on and control over American cities.  Get your guns and ammunition now.  Be prepared to use them.

Guns.com:

Attorneys for an undocumented immigrant facing charges in the high-profile death of a woman on San Francisco’s Pier 14 contend it may be the gun’s fault.

Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, 45, a Mexican national with at least five deportations under his belt, contends he shot Kathryn Steinle by accident with a found gun now tied to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. California Superior Court Judge Brendan P. Conroy on Friday found there is enough evidence for Lopez-Sanchez to stand trial on charges of second-degree murder for his alleged involvement in the woman’s death.

However, his legal team contends that the man never pulled the trigger and claimed the type of handgun involved is documented for having accidental discharges.

“This gun has no safety,” said public defender Matt Gonzalez as reported by the Associated Press.  “There is no evidence that he put his finger in the trigger.”

The gun was discharged by the perpetrator, therefore he put his finger on the trigger and pulled it.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

Actually though, you can’t blame the lawyer for this – he’s doing what lawyers do.  He is only following the road LEOs pave for him concerning guns that just discharge, as if guns have some sort of will and volition all their own and can decide to “go off” without human action.  If police departments all over America buy into that line of crap for the sake of saving careers, then so should the courts.

It’s dirty and scurrilous top to bottom, side to side, front to back, not the least of which is allowing a border that invites people like this across anyway.  What’s one more pile of mud?

Why, turn against peaceable citizens, of course.

With non-fatal shootings on the rise in Boston this year, public safety officials are reaching out to the city’s legal firearm owners in the hopes of cutting down on the number of guns that end up with criminals.

“Police serve an important role in reducing gun crime, but more can be done with your help,” a letter from the Boston Police Department and addressed to firearm owners states.

Police are offering free gun locks and are reminding firearm owners of information on how to report a gun sale, loss or theft; information on how to turn in a firearm, if so desired; and advice on proper weapon storage.

“Without better enforcement and education, we’re letting things slip through the cracks and legally purchased firearms are falling into the hands of criminals,” Commissioner William Evans said in a statement.

The statement cited a recent study that found that 32 percent of traceable handguns that Boston police recovered from 2007 to 2013 were originally purchased from a licensed Massachusetts dealer. And of the Massachusetts-sourced firearms, “almost 85 percent of them were recovered from someone other than the original, legal purchaser.” Sixty-three percent “had not been reported as transferred or sold to the Massachusetts Firearms Records Bureau, even though such [transfer reports] are required by law,” the city statement said. And just 11 percent of the Massachusetts-sourced guns were reported lost or stolen.

I wouldn’t report a sale either.  It’s none of your damn business.  This is pathetic.  This is literally all the collectivists have left in their tool bag against violence: going after peaceable citizens.

Actually, it may indeed be about the last refuge for the totalitarians.  When you create an entitled, criminal class who thinks you owe them a living, color TV, place to live, iPhone, food and medical care, there is nothing police can do to ameliorate the damage wrought by those social programs.

Entitlement creates monsters.  Monsters cannot be domesticated.