David Codrea:

Sherriff Ivey’s “common sense” approach is a welcome and refreshing change from the “Only Ones” attitudes and efforts to undermine the right to keep and bear arms that we’ve noted recently from the Fraternal Order of Police “leadership.” That “us vs. them” approach is promulgated by all too many politically-motivated police chiefs who put their personal professional exclusivity before their oaths to support the Constitution.

I applaud the Sheriff’s candor and commitment to the constitution.  Now he needs to work in Florida to repeal the concealed carry permitting process and legalize open carry.

As for the matter of “run, hide and tell,” the U.K. simply copied our very own DHS stupidity with a little modification of their own, ours being run, hide and fight.  And as for the matter of all of those dumbass corporations who forbid their employees from carrying weapons on the premises, they may be answering to a jury latter on those hundreds of employees killed on the job by an active shooter from which no one could defend because they were unarmed.  If that does happen, and it eventually will in America, may the corporation become an example by going bankrupt from the class action settlement.  I have absolutely no sympathy for such a corporation.

Via Outdoor Hub.

Pacific Standard:

Why do so many Americans own handguns, and resist the regulation of firearms? “Protection” is the most common response, but who (or what) exactly are they protecting themselves from? And why do fact-based arguments, such as the reduction in crime rates and the dangers of having a gun in the house, fail to change minds?

Newly published research provides a partial answer. It finds handgun ownership is motivated by two distinct impulses: “The specific perceived threat of assault, and a diffuse threat of a dangerous world.”

A research team led by University of Groningen psychologist Wolfgang Stroebe reports that second, vague notion of potential peril is the stronger of the two—and the one most resistant to rethinking.

“Handgun ownership and advocacy is, at least in part, a psychological phenomenon,” the researchers write. “Gun ownership is predicted by various levels of perceived risk”—including the difficult-to-dislodge belief that the world is a menacing place.

[ … ]

“This could make it difficult to conduct persuasion campaigns aimed at dissuading handgun owners of the need to own a gun (or support limitations on gun ownership),” they write. That’s because “a broader system of beliefs about the nature of the social world, and what people are like, is extremely difficult to influence.”

Such mindsets are learned in childhood, and tend to shape one’s thinking for the rest of one’s life.

If you believe that sin is the moral malady and affliction of mankind, the psychologists don’t know what to do with you.  The world must surely be a safe place, because just shut up.  They are looking for ways to retrain your thinking, but sadly you’ve learned this behavior and world view in childhood.  They find it difficult to dislodge.

Have you ever seen a profession so disconnected from reality as this one?  You may as well consider them Voodoo practitioners and witchdoctors.

WSOC.com:

The North Carolina House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The North Carolina Association of Police Chiefs is against House Bill 746, which a person can carry a concealed gun, but would allow people to carry without a permit and no formal training, which is required now.

The bill would allow citizens age 18 and older, who legally own a gun, to carry it concealed without a permit, anywhere they can carry it openly.

It now will head to the Senate.

“Most people dying are being killed with guns,” said Judy Williams, the leader of the organization Mothers Of Murdered Offspring. She is working to combat rising violent crime in Charlotte.

Williams is worried the bill, if passed, will lead to more violence.

Most people being shot are young inner city blacks who are dying due to cultural and moral problems, unrelated to whether concealed carry requires a permit to be legal.

So Ms. Williams, what makes you think that if a young gang member decides to kill someone else, he is going to hesitate and reconsider his decision because concealed carry isn’t legal for him?

As for Roy Cooper, I seriously doubt that he will sign the bill into law.  Since the county Sheriffs and city and county police are separated in function and organization, and since it is the CLEOs and their employees who get the money, and since gun purchase permitting requires CLEO signoff, there is no incentive for the police to go along with any recognition of liberties and rights.

Dean Weingarten on a recent Eighth Circuit decision:

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August reversed that decision and ruled Officers Nathan Kaiser, Tobias Hite and Shane Jensen violated his Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

The judges took issue with the reason for the stop, saying a report of a person with a handgun isn’t enough to create a reasonable suspicion of a crime, and in Nebraska and Lincoln people can openly carry handguns.

[ … ]

Officer Kaiser relied on an incident report that did not contain information sufficient to create reasonable suspicion that Duffie had already, was, or was about to commit a crime. See United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 227 (1985) (extending Terry to the investigation of completed crimes). Nebraska law permits individuals who are at least 18 years old to open carry handguns in public. See Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 28-1202, 28-1204 (2009). The City of Lincoln does not restrict an individual’s right to open carry except in certain locations. See Lincoln, Neb., Mun. Ordinances § 9.36.130. Moreover, the mere report of a person with a handgun is insufficient to create reasonable suspicion. See Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266, 272 (2000)

I thought I found all of the articles on and instances of open carry, but I missed this one.  I’m glad that Dean wrote on this.  It adds to our collected wisdom and information concerning what the courts think of this kind of behavior by the police – at least, some courts, even if they refuse to do anything about it.

For God’s sake.  The 58-year-old black pastor is a double amputee.  He fell all over the place trying to comply with the idiot’s command.  He injured himself and under other circumstances I can see death resulting from his fall (if he had landed differently).

The only disappointing thing about this judgment is that the cops weren’t fired and put in prison.  The circumstances are not necessarily similar to but dovetail with the decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where they found that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police violated the rights of Nathaniel Black, even though Black was apparently a criminal and did indeed break the law.

Nathaniel Black was part of a group of men in Charlotte, North Carolina who local police officers suspected might be engaged in criminal activity. In particular, Officers suspected that after seeing one of the men openly carrying a firearm – which was legal in North Carolina – that there was most likely another firearm present. When police began frisking the men one by one, Mr. Black wished to leave, but was told he was not free to leave. Officers chased Mr. Black and discovered that he possessed a firearm; it was later discovered that he was a previously convicted felon. Mr. Black was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Before the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Mr. Black moved to suppress the evidence against him. His suppression motion was denied, he entered a guilty plea preserving a right to appeal the denial of the suppression motion, and he was sentenced to fifteen (15) years imprisonment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, however, determined that the officers had improperly seized Mr. Black, suppressed the evidence against him, and vacated his sentence.

This was the right decision.  Open carry is legal in North Carolina, and without this being a “Terry Stop” – and it most certainly wasn’t – Mr. Black should not even have been detained.

If you are a CLEO or a Chief of Police reading this, listen to me well.  If open carry is legal in your state, you cannot stop someone for open carry.  I know it sounds so obvious and common-sense that this shouldn’t have to be said.  But apparently with the police it does indeed have to be pointed out – again, and again, and again.

Only an idiot doesn’t understand this, or if you understand and refuse to implement and comply, you’re just a criminal with a badge.

Via Codrea, this from The Kansas City Star Editorial Board:

Guns and the mentally ill and physically fragile just don’t mix.

Okay, so prove it?  You’ve made a strong statement concerning who has and doesn’t have rights, so prove it?

Given that I’ve quoted more mental health professionals than I can count concerning the fact that the mentally ill suffer no increased propensity to violence when compared to others, that the mental health profession doesn’t have the tools to engage in behavior prediction, and that the mental health profession cannot bear the burden people like this want to place on their profession, I think I an entitled to an explanation.  You, editorial board, waxed educated and know-it-all, so it’s time to put up or shut up.  I’m listening and waiting.

Finally, I’m wondering about this notion of the physically fragile not being allowed to have guns in the view of the Kansas City Star Editorial Board.  Does that mean that the editorial board would prevent the very people who needed guns the most, women and the elderly, from being able to defend themselves?  Are they that crass and morbid that they want to see innocent people injured or killed because they are physically more fragile than others?  Is this the logical outcome of Margaret Sanger’s philosophy of eugenics?

And do they go as far as Hamilton Nolan with Gawker?  Are they trying to lampoon and humiliate the weakest among us?  Are they really that dark and twisted?

The News & Observer:

John “Curly” Brazelton of Havelock, a former Marine who belongs to a hunting club, said in an interview with The N&O last week that everyone in his hunting club opposes the idea of eliminating concealed-carry permits.

“We all have them,” Brazelton said. “We have the best law in the country right now.”

Hmm … “the best law in the country right now.”  What we have is a ‘statist, “mother-may-I,” here is some money, may I please exercise my God-given rights, pretty please, here is all of my records of my entire life, please, please like me, please, pretty please’ system of intrusion of our rights.

I told you so.  Fudds are not your friends.

Breitbart:

Handler told THR:

Obviously, [the state of] gun control in this country is totally unacceptable, and the gun lobby is so strong and so powerful that anytime a celebrity can bring attention to this cause — among many other [causes] — you know it’s an easy thing for anyone to do. We’re way behind the times in terms of gun control in this country, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. Our voices just need to keep getting louder, and the people that make an impact need to really just step up and stick their necks out a little bit more.

THR then pointed to the NRA’s support of Trump during last year’s campaign campaign and Trump’s pro-Second Amendment stance then and now. Handler responded, “People need to be louder than ever with this president and his relationship to the gun lobby. He doesn’t give a s—about people. He doesn’t care about anybody.”

“Nobody is trying to take away your guns. If you want to go shoot, you know, whatever, in the woods, that’s fine, but it’s a hobby,” she told THR. “If your hobby is [affecting] innocent people being killed all the time, children included, don’t you think you should reconsider the lack of restrictions placed on your hobby?”

Okay, Chelsea, so I assume that you and your parents have sworn off any armed security for yourselves, forever, for the rest of your lives, right?  Let me know if my assumption is wrong.  Because if I’m wrong, then you and your handler and parents are just lying, hypocritical crap weasels who want protection you deny to others – because you don’t give a shit about people.

Daniel Greenfield supplies a bracing example of Sharia law.

Islam is peaceful. Just ask Rafiqi Islam, a loving husband, who told his wife that he had a present for her, blindfolded her to make it a surprise and then cut off her fingers. Then the rest of the Islam family mopped up the blood, while Mr. Islam threw her fingers into the trash, and after a few hours took her to the hospital where they warned her to tell the doctors that she had an accident.

The proximate cause of this event was that Mrs. Islam wanted to continue her education and Mr. Islam being a good Emirati Muslim was not so fond of the idea.

This is the sort of thing that Mr. Islam does from time to time. Diners in London got a surprise from Mr. Islam, three of him, who began stabbing and slashing their way through some trendy nightspots. The blindfold had been slapped on them by their own government and their own media.

Close your eyes while hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants show up in America and Europe. Keep your eyes closed and Mr. Islam will give you a great big surprise.

For Europe, it’s more likely to be somewhere on the order of seven million.  But that doesn’t mean America isn’t affected.  John Guandolo gives us a synopsis of what he’s covered the last several years in his own work.

From Minneapolis (MN) to Hamtramck (MI) to Falls Church (VA) to Paterson (NJ) and many other towns and cities across the fifty states, the Islamic Movement is quietly conquering America.

The federal government sleeps, many state governments – including those controlled by Republicans – do their best to accommodate muslims waging Civilization Jihad against America, and the hard-left Marxists – including nearly all of the local and national media – are collaborators in the enemy’s efforts.

As UTT has previously reported, Minneapolis, Minnesota is currently enemy-held territory and will require force to take back.

Hamtramck, Michigan is a small suburb of Detroitistan, and is the first town in America to have a majority muslim city council.  This formerly Polish-Catholic town has been overrun by sharia-adherent muslims who have already achieved accommodations for sharia in the community.

Falls Church, Virginia is home to the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas’ Dar al Hijra Islamic Center.  The Muslim Brotherhood leader of Dar al Hijra, Sheikh Shaker Elsayed (former President of the MB’s Muslim American Society), recently gave a lecture promoting female genital mutilation.  Dar al Hijra is a jihadi factory whose property is owned by the MB’s bank NAIT (North American Islamic Trust).

Al Qaeda’s Anwar al Awlaki was the Imam of the Dar al Hijra beginning in January 2001 and serving for over a year there.

The community around Dar al Hijra has been taken over by sharia-adherent muslims.  Law enforcement calls the two twin apartment buildings in the area “Taliban Towers,” and the number of jihadis in this area of Northern Virginia, only minutes from the nation’s capital, is significant.

Historically, Paterson, New Jersey has been a melting pot of Irish, Germans, Dutch, Italians, Eastern Europeans and others.  Christians and Jews made a home in this town approximately 20 miles outside of New York City.

Now, estimates put the number of muslims in Paterson at over 30% of the total population.  This number – possibly over 40,000 – makes Paterson, New Jersey the town with the one of the highest concentrations of muslims in the United States.  Many Turks and Syrians are a part of the muslim community, but the majority are Palestinians/Hamas.  Many citizens are concerned for their safety and security.

He goes on, but then it’s so easy to do just that.  As for the U.K., Islamists are already part of the warp and woof of the culture.  It cannot be eradicated by closing the borders.  A Firearms Officer with the Metropolitan Police thinks that more police are necessary to bring security.  But he uses language reminiscent of the counterinsurgency experience in Northern Ireland.  Attempts to use the British experience there is why the British failed in both Basra and the Helmand Province.

In Northern Ireland the British were dealing with a people who were like minded in culture and (even though you might think differently) religion.  What the U.K. faces now is totally different, and would require a major paradigm shift in thinking as well as a rearming of the British people, not just LEOs.  This – they will not do.  I judge the U.K. as finished because of this.  Subjects of the crown will always be just that: subjects of the crown.

Here in America we face a different enemy.  The proximate enemy might be the uber-powerful state, or it might be Islam.  There are many dangers.  But the immediate danger has to do with the thought framework within which we function.  So here I am going to address something that needed to have been said long ago.

While my reputation might be one of throwing around tough language when it’s necessary, or just whenever I feel like it, in the end I am still a Christian.  I eat with you, live among you, worship with you, and know how you think.  I am not addressing those outside my own world view.  To be sure, I take great amusement in drilling holes in opposing world views.  If you believe that upon death the body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end, you certainly have the freedom to believe that way, unimpeded by me.

If you want to tackle me for my world and life view, as I said, I find great amusement and pleasure in such things.  But you don’t make me the least bit nervous about my own views.  I took all the course work in philosophy, systematic theology and apologetics to hold my own in such a throw down.  But that’s a subject for a different time.  Right now I want to address Christians, because the Christian community in America is in need of a major intervention.  You know it’s true.

I’ve addressed it before, this idea that God expects us to defend ourselves and others because of the image of God.  But there is no end to the silly and trite pacifists who think they are being brave by eschewing self defense.  So let’s say it again.  Jesus demanded that his disciples seek weapons for their own defense, and not only did He do that, He told them to become criminals by doing so.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

He told them it doesn’t matter what the state says.  They are to arm themselves.  Period.  The most high God said so.  It wasn’t an option.  It was a commandment.  And yet, we still see supposed Christians who are reluctant to arm up, raised in the “Jesus was a Bohemian Hippie Flower Child” culture of Christianity.

But the second problem is one that is a bit harder to fisk.  It has to do with eschatology.  Bear with me for a moment.  Millions upon millions of Christians in America believe in something called dispensationalist, premillennial eschatology.  In brief, it holds that the Church is a “parenthesis” in history, a divine “uh oh.”  Didn’t mean for that to happen.  God’s people are still the Jews, and this parenthesis ends when he “raptures” the church out of the world and deals with Israel.

The church gets to sit on its ass, do nothing, watch stupid night time sitcoms, avoid affecting the world around them, and look like the rest of the world, and then avoid what it has created with its sloth, laziness and inaction.  It’s a magic solution that let’s the church go blindly into the future thinking that everything is going to be okay regardless of what they do or don’t do.

But at no time in history has God ever allowed His church to neglect affecting the world and yet avoid the wake of judgment that creates.  The times this has happened in history are too numerous to cite, but suffice it to say that the Jews aren’t special, there will be no thousand year peaceful reign in Jerusalem, there will be no rapture, and God doesn’t suffer His church to become fools.

Trouble is coming, and in fact it is already here.  Things are going to get a lot worse, not better, at least for a while, and for the Christians reading this who have flirted with this ridiculous ideology, you’d better gun up.  Moreover, you need to think hard about these things.  To be sure, you need to be in decent physical shape by staying active when you can, whether it is carrying body armor and doing squad rushes, or simply hard exercise.  You also need to be practicing with your weapons.

But the root of the problem lies deeper.  You need to develop a thought framework for violence.  When is it acceptable?  Under what conditions?  What would it take to meet that threshold?  What do you do when that threshold is met?  How prepared are you mentally to accept the challenges that will bring?  Do you have a plan?

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you need to do some serious reflection.  The theologians aren’t going to help you.  They’re lost in a world of racial reconciliation and a theology of togetherness.  Or you might be like the writer I cited earlier who thinks he is being brave by ignoring defense of his family.  Very well.  Your girls will wear hijabs and marry child molesters, your sons will pray to Mecca five times a day, your wife will be so fearful of losing her life she doesn’t even go out of the house, and you will work your entire life to enrich pagans and barbarians if they don’t kill you first.

Time is short, and the situation is serious.  The shortness of the time calls for an honest appraisal.  Within what mental and intellectual framework will you operate?

WRAL.com:

Raleigh, N.C. — A House committee voted Wednesday in favor of a bill that would eliminate North Carolina’s requirement that people obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

House Bill 746 creates “parity” for people who are allowed to carry guns openly but suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they put on a jacket and cover up their holstered sidearms simply because they lack a concealed carry permit, said sponsor Rep.Chris Millis, R-Pender.

“This bill would allow law-abiding citizens to be able to carry concealed, regardless of obtaining the mandatory government permit, and this ability to carry concealed is only in places where it is currently allowable to openly carry a firearm,” Millis said, noting 13 other U.S. states have similar rules on the books.

Concealed carry permits are issued through a county sheriff’s office, which conducts a criminal background check and looks for records of mental illness or incapacity. The requirement has long been a sore spot with gun rights advocates, who say it gives sheriffs too much power to deny gun owners what they say is their constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon.

Grass Roots North Carolina has worked hard for this bill, and I certainly support it.  I also enjoyed meeting GRNC face to face at the recent gun show in Charlotte, and was pleased to hear that some of them read my articles.  But this bill isn’t all that it seems.

Oh to be sure, it’s potentially carry without a permit, but let me ask you a question?  Why would this be the case?

The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association has taken no position on the bill, but said it’s pleased legislators didn’t also move to revoke permits required to buy handguns. County sheriffs are a key voice in the debate because they issue handgun permits.

The North Carolina Sheriff’s Association has taken no position on the bill.  They couldn’t care less.  It tells you why right in that single sentence.  To give you a little background, at one time the CLEO had to issue both permits to carry and permits to buy a handgun.  The permit to carry involved a lot more than permits to buy, including a comprehensive review of medical records that you must turn over to the CLEO.

They still do that, and they also still issue permits to buy handguns, but oops, what do you know, unintended consequences and all, the CLEOs need more time and more money and more personnel because that mental health screening that was previously done for CHP holders – yea, that one, well, they do it for all handgun purchases now.

So just to buy a handgun requires one and the same process as a CHP holder goes through.  Recognizing constitutional carry is a bit of a ruse and misdirect when they have just now incorporated the full CHP process into handgun purchases.  While several months ago some state senators waxed confused and apologetic over the behemoth new system they didn’t know they were creating, it’s almost as if they planned this whole thing to begin with.

Pardon me if I don’t get giddy over constitutional carry in North Carolina.  Get rid of the communist CLEO permitting system for handgun purchases and then I’ll think you’re actually doing something about liberty in North Carolina.