David Codrea:

Something else marked by its conspicuous absence from media reports: Any statement from Ako Abdul-Samad condemning his former aide following the guilty plea. Instead, we’re treated to “faith leader” Samad “call[ing] for unity to battle ‘Islamophobia.’”

Um, no.  I’d rather focus on fake terror attacks for the purpose of pressing gun control.

“You know less than you think about guns: the misleading uses, flagrant abuses and shoddy statistics of social science about gun violence.”  Well, to be fair, there is nothing science about social science.  Those two words don’t belong together.

Note to HEB on open carry.  “As a retailer of alcohol, long guns and unlicensed guns are prohibited on our property under the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission rules. H-E-B maintains the same policy we have for years, only concealed licensed handguns are allowed on our property,” reads a statement from H-E-B.”  Hey, I think that’s made up.  That’s not the story you told at first.  At first you just said you didn’t want open carry because you didn’t want open carry.  Now you’re blaming it on the ABC.  Which is it?  I’d prefer you just be honest about this.

Fusion.net:

Texas is starting off the new year with a bang: A statewide gun law that doesn’t make much sense.

“Unfortunately, this law was not written very well. It’s not very clear…I can read it one way, I can read it another way,” said Donna Edmundson, the city attorney for Houston, at a town hall meeting two months ago. The law—which will make Texas the 45th and largest state to allow citizens with permits to openly carry handguns—goes into effect on January 1.

But by the end of that hour-and-a-half session, which was also attended by the police chief and district attorney, very little had been resolved.

Now, as they anticipate anticipate an uptick in 911 calls reporting people walking the streets with guns, police departments across the state are still trying to figure out how—and if—they can enforce the law, which legal experts say is marked with gaping loopholes and ambiguities.

For one thing, legal experts say, it’s not clear if the law allows police to detain someone who they suspect is open carrying without a license. Some districts are training police to ask to see a license only if an individual is engaging in otherwise suspicious activity. Others say they are free to ask because there is reasonable suspicion that the person may be committing a crime—unlawfully carrying a gun without a license.

Even trickier for police officers is what happens when a citizen is asked and refuses to show proof of an open-carry license. According to the Dallas Morning News, there is no penalty in the law for license holders who refuse to do so:

[C]ase law in Texas could prohibit police from arresting that person, since the action has no penalty.

But if the person isn’t a license holder, the officer can arrest him for unlawfully carrying a gun. So at what point does an officer know enough — like the person’s identity and whether he’s a license holder — to determine whether to make an arrest?

In other words, as it is written, the new open carry law is nearly impossible to enforce, said Geoffrey Corn, a professor of law at the South Texas College of Law in Houston. “It’s kind of like a Catch-22,” he told Fusion. Carrying without a license is illegal, but there’s no clear way for police to investigate if the person does indeed have a license to open carry or not.

“The way it’s gonna end up is that police are gonna have encounters with people who are open carrying that are going to escalate, and that are going to lead to an arrest,” Corn said. “And then that’s going to lead to defense attorneys saying the whole thing was tainted, and that the seizure was illegal because he had right to carry.”

Originally, the bill had a “no stop” provision, which barred police from asking anyone for their open carry license. Law enforcement groups fought it, saying it would prevent police from doing their jobs, while endangering the public. In response to that pressure, the bill was rewritten in its current form.

“Traditionally, the way legislatures tackle hard problems is to leave it to the courts,” George Dix, a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, told Fusion. “In this case, I suspect there was no politically acceptable language they could agree on, so they left it up to others to decide.”

The officials who pushed the bill through saw it as mostly a symbolic measure, he speculated. They weren’t necessarily concerned with how it would be enforced.

For all its problems, there is one thing abundantly clear with the new law: seeing someone on the street with a gun is not enough of a reason to detain them and ask for their license. Seeing someone with a firearm no longer makes them suspicious in the eyes of the law, even as regular citizens might be alarmed at the sight.

“What a lot of police are worried about is not that there’s gonna be open carry, but that there’s going to be a deliberate effort to exercise that right in what I might characterize as an ‘unusually zealous’ way,” said Corn. “And there can be a lot of chaos in those circumstances.”

Deliberate, mind you.  Not accidental, but someone exercising a right deliberately.  Deliberately!  And not only that, but in an “unusually zealous” way!

So tell us Mr. Corn.  What does it mean to deliberately exercise a right in an “unusually zealous” way?  Be precise, please.  Legally precise.  And explain how that can be chaotic.

Or perhaps this is just some bullshit term made up for some bullshit article over something that won’t end up mattering a hill of beans to most people?  Which is it, Mr. Corn?

Indystar.com:

A veteran was wounded Wednesday at Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center when a handgun he brought into the Indianapolis hospital accidentally discharged in his pocket while he was in a procedure room — possibly an MRI suite.

Hospital officials confirmed the accidental shooting in a statement issued Thursday and reported the victim, whose name was not released, received immediate medical attention. The statement added the man’s wound did not threaten his life.

A hospital spokesman initially confirmed in a telephone call from The Indianapolis Star that the incident involved an MRI, but the subsequent statement said only that the incident occurred “in a procedure room.” When asked for clarification about the involvement of the MRI, the spokesman said in an email that the statement “is our response at this time.”

The statement noted it is a violation of federal and state law to bring a firearm into the hospital and “notification of this law is posted at every entrance.”

Having a gun or other metal object in the vicinity of an MRI machine would also be a violation of widely accepted medical and safety protocol, according to American Journal of Roentgenology, and could have fatal consequences. It was unclear Thursday if criminal charges would be pursued. The Marion County prosecutor’s office was closed Thursday.

The accident at Roudebush may be the first time in the U.S. that a patient was wounded when a gun discharged in an MRI unit.

It also is at least the second instance of a handgun accidentally firing in the suite of one powerful imagining machines which, according to WebMD, use “a magnetic field and pulses of radio wave energy to make pictures of organs and structures inside the body.”

In the other case, according to a 2002 report in the American Journal of Roentgenology, a gun discharged in an MRI after it was pulled from the hand of an off-duty police officer as he attempted to place the weapon on a cabinet about 3 feet away from the MRI’s magnet bore. No one was injured in that case.

In 2009, another off-duty police officer in Florida sustained a minor hand injury when her department-issued gun was pulled inside an MRI machine. Jacksonville TV station WJTX reported the injury occurred when her hand became trapped between the gun and magnet.

Another MRI accident — which involved a metal object, but not a gun — claimed the life of a 6-year-old New York boy in 2001.

The deadly accident at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., occurred when a metal oxygen tank about the size of a fire extinguisher was pulled into the MRI and fractured the boy’s skull, according to the New York Times.

In a report on the 2002 incident in New York involving a handgun, the Journal of Roentgenology found, the police officer’s “gun was immediately pulled into the bore, where it struck the left side and spontaneously discharged a round into the wall of the room at the rear of the magnet.”

At the time the .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol fired, the report said, “it was reportedly in a cocked and locked position; that is, the hammer was cocked and the thumb safety was engaged to prevent the hammer from striking the firing pin.” There also was a live round in the chamber.

“Many people who choose this weapon for personal protection will carry it in this manner because it allows them to quickly fire the weapon if needed,” the report noted.

The discharge was likely “a result of the effect of the magnetic field on the firing pin block,” the report said.

“The firing pin block was probably drawn into its uppermost position by force of the magnetic field. The firing pin block has to overcome only light pressure from a relatively small spring to release the firing pin. The pistol was likely drawn into the magnetic field so that the muzzle struck the magnet’s bore first. With the firing pin allowed to move freely in its channel, the force of the impact on the muzzle end was sufficient to cause the firing pin to overcome its spring pressure and move forward to strike the primer of the chambered round.”

From a wonkish standpoint, I find this quite interesting.  I would have liked a picture (or set of pictures) to go along with the explanation, though.  Do we have any gunsmiths who can elaborate and clarify for us?

WSBTV.com:

On Monday, Gov. Nathan Deal rescinded an executive order that prevented state agencies from any involvement in resettling Syrian refugees, clearing the way for newly arrived transplants from the war-torn nation to receive food stamp benefits.

This comes days after Attorney General Sam Olens said in a formal opinion that Georgia can’t legally resist the resettlement of Syrian refugees.

Deal joined more than two dozen other Republican governors who raised concerns about President Barack Obama’s administration’s resettlement program in the wake of the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris in November.

“We’re ready to defend it if we have to. I’d rather not spend taxpayer money defending something that can be avoided,” he said in December. “I just don’t know why the federal government wants to do this behind closed doors in total secrecy and don’t even trust state leaders charged with the security of our states with basic knowledge.”

Olens wrote that he is “unaware of any law or agreement that would permit a state to carve out refugees from particular countries from participation in the refugee resettlement program, no matter how well-intended or justified the desire to carve out such refugees might be.”

“Accordingly, it is my official opinion that both federal law and the State’s agreement to act as the state refugee resettlement coordinator prevent the State from denying federally-funded benefits to Syrian refugees lawfully admitted into the United States,” he wrote.

Follow the money.  There is a lot of it being sent by the state to the federal government, and the federal government sends it back with strings attached.

It’s pathetic, really.  All that has to happen is for a lawyer to throw his shirt up, flash his belly, and say someone can or can’t do something, and everyone cowers.

The governor can do what he wants to do, and for whatever he’s willing to send the state police and national guard to back him up.  Deal doesn’t want this fight, and he would rather saddle his own state with Syrians than resist the *.gov.

Under this schema (where the feds control the states because they force taxes and control the money flow), no state has the power do to anything or resist any act, pronouncement or ruling.  I believe in common parlance this is called a monarchy.

Sad, very sad.

This commentary assumes you are aware of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters standoff, where supporters of ranchers in Oregon are ensconced on a small building called a “headquarters.”  The lede is rather silly if you ask me, but it’s being carried that way in the main stream media.

I think myself unqualified to address the specifics of the claims made by the ranchers.  Apparently, the Hammonds say they set the fire to clear invasive plant species, and the fire got somewhat out of control and burned some innocuous federally controlled land.  Thus the charges, although the specific charges are ridiculous, relating to being domestic terrorists.  This is an overreach by the prosecutors.

Every man has his own threshold at which we will tolerate no more.  I realize that I have readers who would not tolerate having a concealed handgun permit because it is an infringement of God-given rights to self defense, an abdication of said control to the state rather than to God who issues the ruling on self defense to begin with.

I have a CHP, and my reaction is, “that’s right!”  I suffer the infringement of this God-given right because my threshold has no been crossed yet.  I am not ready to take up arms against the government, not because I believe my views are wrong, but because of other reasons.  I have a family to support, I have a job to keep, and keeping that job and supporting my family requires that I stay out of prison.  Those are the facts, like them or not.  If I want to carry a weapon and support my family, I need to have a CHP.

As for the American founders, and I consider them to be better men that I.  But again, every man has his threshold.  I will not criticize another man for his, and he shouldn’t criticize me for mine – as long as we have a reasonable threshold.

Enter men without thresholds.  What’s happening in Oregon is nothing less than armed sedition.

This is an act of armed sedition against lawful authority. That is all that it is, and that is quite enough. This is not “an expression of anti-government sentiment.” Flipping off the governor as he drives by is “an expression of anti-government sentiment.” What Alex Jones does every day is “an expression of anti-government sentiment,” and god bless them all for it. That’s what the Founders had in mind. This is not an “occupation” following “a peaceful protest.” That would be all those folks who got bludgeoned and pepper-sprayed out of Zuccotti Park a couple of years back. (And when exactly did ABC News decide it wasn’t a news organization anymore?) These are men with guns who have declared themselves outside the law. These are men with guns who have taken something that belongs to all of us. These are traitors and thieves who got away with this dangerous nonsense once, and have been encouraged to get away with it again, and they draw their inspiration not solely from the wilder fringes of our politics, either. Ammon Bundy and his brothers should have been thrown in jail after they gathered themselves in rebellion the first time.

[ … ]

There is no actual tyranny in this country against which to take up arms. There is bureaucratic inertia. There is pigheaded bureaucracy. There even is political chicanery. But there is no actual tyranny in the Endangered Species Act, or in the Bureau of Land Management, or in the Environmental Protection Agency, or in the Affordable Care Act, or in IRS dumbassery, or even in whatever it is that the president plans to say about guns in the next week or so. Anyone who argues that actual tyranny exists is a dangerous charlatan who should be mocked from the public square. Anyone who argues that there is out of political ambition, or for their own personal profit, should be shunned by decent people until they regain whatever moral compass they once had.

To reflect back for a moment on the situation, if the fire had been set to provoke the *.gov, it worked.  I won’t criticize that, although my threshold might not be the same one.  The EPA is a terrorist organization, just like the Bureau of Land Management.  Furthermore, the federal government has absolutely no business owning land.

But if the fire was set and a plan for containment to ensure that it was a true “controlled burn” was not in place, or if a professional had not been consulted to ensure that it was well done, the perpetrators are goobers.  Yes, goobers.  Not terrorists, but witless goobers.  They chose to go out and set a fire all … by … themselves … without the assistance of professionals like a fire engineer.  Yes, the EPA, National Park Service and others are full of witless goobers as well, with “controlled burns” being set near the Los Alamos National Laboratory that ended up requiring evacuation of the lab for one month, the Animas river spill in Colorado perpetrated by the EPA, and other examples.  I’m being gracious, goobers they’re not in some instances.  Terrorists they are (witness the control over wood burning stoves), and yet, they have the power at the moment.  So we’re back to that issue.

The best reaction to this comes from a tweet.

But regardless of the fact that only goobers set “controlled burns” that aren’t controlled, we are where we are with this.  And David Codrea takes the temperature.

So what are the administration’s options?  Assuming functionaries had their New Years weekends cut short, you can bet they‘re focus-grouping and war-gaming, and weighing scenarios and options. You can also bet special tactical teams are on alert, if not on their way — and if DOJ approaches this as domestic terrorism, the feds will totally marginalize the local sheriff.

They could talk the guys down, although from the rhetoric of the takeover leaders and Bundy’s conviction that he is carrying out the Lord’s will, that doesn’t sound likely. If they do come out, don’t expect the Justice Department to show leniency.

They could lay siege and wait them out, turn off all power and water, and see if a week or two might soften some resolve. On the other hand, depending on how many answer Bundy‘s call, the enforcers could find the greater cause for their concern is amassing outside their perimeter.

The third option would be to go full Waco, making sure the media is kept back so the narrative could be whatever they wanted to put out through a spokesman. It’s been done before.

That’s why an analysis by Mike Vanderboegh on his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog is important for the government (and for all of us) to understand, so that people with access to decision-makers know, in no uncertain terms, the precipitous situation a brutal reaction will produce — for everyone.

If things blow up in Oregon, things could quickly get out of control everywhere, and while we can only imagine what that will look like, the certainty is things would be ugly and prolonged. The government will act and affected people who will not comply will react. It’s an incredibly dangerous situation, where a shot, whether intentional or an “accidental” discharge — and it may not even matter which “side” fires it — could be the “Time’s up” spark that changes all the rules.

The fact that those occupying the federal building are being labeled as seditionists and insurrectionists should be a badge of honor, whether those doing the occupying deserve it or not.  The writer at Esquire forgets (or never understood) America’s rich relationship with sedition.  We began that way, we will live that way, we will embrace change when the threshold has been crossed.

If you have no threshold, like the writer at Esquire, you believe that if the government says to kill every person named David who is born on the third Thursday of every month as a sacrifice to Molech, then it should be done and enforced by the power of the state.  There is no difference between you and a Nazi or Fascist or their rightful heirs, Margaret Sanger and the eugenicists and abortionists.

We are where we are.  This won’t go away, this will continue until one party backs down, the *.gov, or the people.  It may occur by preemptive surrender, but I seriously doubt it.  That means that at some point, whether this is it or just one more skirmish, it will all come to a head.  The *.gov is playing with fire, even if it doesn’t know it.

CSM:

At least in popular culture, Texas has always been synonymous with gun-totin’ cowboys, but until midnight on New Year’s Eve, the reality has been far different. Texas, in fact, has been one of the most restrictive gun-rights states in America.

Thanks to a new law, however, the state will be one of the most relaxed.

How relaxed? Police are discouraged from even asking about someone’s holstered gun. And if they do, they may not have much power to do anything if the person refuses to show a license.

The upshot is that the sight of civilians carrying visible weapons is about to become commonplace in the Lone Star State.

The lawmakers who crafted the legislation passed it in part as a symbolic measure at an unusual time in the United States. Even as gun control groups link America’s obsession with firearms to a slight rise in the number of mass shootings, the US public seems more enamored than ever with weaponry and the power it conveys. Black Friday this year saw the biggest gun cache ever purchased in one day – enough to arm a new military the size of the Marine Corps, as Bob Owens points out on the “Bearing Arms” blog.

Indeed, with notable exceptions in New York, Connecticut, and Colorado, the bulk of states have steadily expanded gun rights since the sunsetting of a 10-year assault weapons ban in 2004. But the new Texas law is Texas-size, given that more than 800,000 Texans are already licensed to carry concealed weapons. Their rights now extend to carrying openly in the halls of the state Capitol.

Given those trends, there’s a fervent debate about whether the new Texas law is a model piece of legislation for a changing America – or a walking disaster just begging for trouble.

To be sure, the law is strict in its own way, offering a model for regulation. Under the law, open-carry folks have to be licensed, a process that includes safety and shooting tests. They also have to show no prior psychological problems, and they have to be at least 21 years old.

But a major sticking point is how the law will affect policing in one of the nation’s most populous expanses. The fact that the law doesn’t provide any sanctions against those who refuse to show a license to a police officer has critics fearing that officers may be handcuffed in their ability to respond to volatile and potentially deadly situations.

Oooo … boogey man gonna getcha!  Hold me Uncle Bob!  I askeerd!  “Walking disaster.”  “Trouble.”  “Volatile and deadly situations.” Oooo …

Again, as a citizen of a traditional open carry state, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen here.  Nothing.  That’s right, nothing.  Life will continue in the lone star state unabated, and the doomsday predictions of law enforcement and the progressives will go down as a monument to their hatred of the common man.

And no, it’s not a model for open carry law.  It’s a half way measure that still recognizes the state’s right to permit the carry of weapons, an illegitimate and bastard right that has no place in a free society.

AP:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country’s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.

Scalia was speaking at a Catholic high school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 is the court’s longest serving justice. He has consistently been one of the court’s more conservative members.

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”

He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

Scalia said during the Sept. 11 attacks he was in Rome at a conference. The next morning, after a speech by President George W. Bush in which he invoked God and asked for his blessing, Scalia said many of the other judges approached him and said they wished their presidents or prime ministers would do the same.

“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,” Scalia said.

“There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that,” he added.

He’s right, of course.  Moreover, this thinking is right in line with the historical reformed thinking of men like Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, and my own professor C. Gregg Singer and others, on the logical impossibility of neutrality.  All syllogisms have presuppositions, those presuppositions being axiomatic irreducibles, with the balance of thought and deduction being impossible without them, and the rest of the system able to be judged on its logical consistency based on those presuppositions.  And I agree with Scalia, even if he doesn’t invoke reformed thinkers for his basis.

Unlike Scalia, however, who is Roman Catholic, I don’t think God cares very much whether we invoke His name in a presidential address or some similar charade.  The invocation of His name must be sincere, humble and within the context of repentance.

This is what I don’t see in America, and thus God will not long bless her.  She is even now experiencing the lack of God’s favor because of her stubbornness.

So Scalia is right, and he is wrong.

News from South Carolina:

CHEROKEE COUNTY, S.C. — A Gaffney man was killed while playing with a gun at his house New Year’s Eve.

Witnesses say Tezlar Wayne Ross, 20, and three other people were in his bedroom looking at a .380 handgun when he reportedly took the clip out of the gun and placed it to his head joking with the others when it discharged.

Ross was pronounced dead at the scene.

“This is certainly a tragic way to end the year.  Guns are not toys and this is an example of what happens when they are treated as such and not respected.  My heart breaks for this family,” Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.

Please don’t ever do anything like that.  Please.  Always observe the rules of gun safety.  Just like car, or the presence of prescription drugs in the home, bad things can happen when the rules aren’t followed.

David Codrea – drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is justification for a SWAT raid.  How about being a black-robed Fascist like the asshole U.S. District Court Judge John W. Lungstrum?  Then we could send the SWAT team after him.  No, I’ve changed my mind.  I don’t like SWAT teams.  Hemp rope and lampposts will do just fine.  Or tar and feathers.  Sometimes I have such a hard time making my mind up.

Ha!

I also find it very disturbing that gun owners in North Liberty feel they have the right to carry their guns … [More]

I guess the irony of that statement doesn’t occur to her.

Mike Vanderboegh is commenting on the Harney County, Oregon standoff, here, here and here.

We’re not trying to shoot to kill.  Um, why else would you shoot?

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts urged trial judges on Thursday to manage cases more efficiently and advised lawyers to avoid “antagonistic tactics” … He suggested that lawyers often tried to wear down their opponents and implicitly advised against “antagonistic tactics, wasteful procedural maneuvers, and teetering brinkmanship.”

Oh good.  With all of my confidence in the American judicial system, I was beginning to fear the overreach of lawyers in defending the rights of the accused.  I’m glad the chief justice set us all straight.