The Sun:

Home Secretary Amber Rudd will today propose to make possessing them illegal everywhere, whether in public or at home.

A long list of dangerous weapons that glamorise violence will also be included in the total ban, putting them on the same legal footing as unlicensed firearms.

They include sword sticks, butterfly knives and blowpipes, as well as a range of martial arts weapons such as deathstars and handclaws.

Only people having the weapons for bonified ceremonial or religious reasons will be exempt from the ban.

Ms Rudd is also looking at making it compulsory to buy all knives in person rather than ordering for delivery to keep them out of children’s hands.

A new offence could be created of delivering them to private property.

Writing for The Sun today, Ms Rudd dubbed knife crime “a scourge on our society”.

[ … ]

Last year, selling zombie knives and possessing them in public was made illegal.

But the police are still powerless to confiscate or arrest suspects who keep the large blades with serrated edges at home.

The proposals come after police called for more powers to tackle spiralling incidences on knife crime, despite earlier crackdowns such as longer jail terms.

More than 32,000 knife offences took place last year in Britain – a 14% increase from 2015.

A scourge on the society, or a recognition of God-given rights for self defense.  But citizens there are subjects of the queen, and have no rights.  So the government is preparing, planning for, and even as we speak, actively engaging in the destruction of the culture and society with immigration and removal of means of self defense, even at home.

Remember my British readers.  Jesus quite literally was commanding His disciples to become criminals when He ordered them to obtain swords.  Such things were illegal in Roman-occupied Israel at the time.

Do the same.  Jesus says so.

Phys.org:

The finding contrasts with some depictions of gun violence prevention groups as “anti-gun.”

“When people talk about the ‘gun debate,’ it typically revolves around gun rights supporters and anti-gun people with no one in the middle,” said Aimee Huff, an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Business.

“We found these groups are in the middle. They strike a balance between individual rights and responsibilities to reduce death and injury.”

The study is one of the first to look at American gun violence prevention groups (GVPGs), many of which have formed in recent years after events such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The study is based on two years of analysis of nine gun violence prevention groups, some of which are focused nationally and others regionally or locally. The researchers interviewed leaders of the groups, attended their rallies and training sessions, talked to state legislators about them, monitored their social media pages and analyzed media coverage focused on them.

The consumer culture researchers sought to unpack the messaging of these groups, whom they describe in the paper using pseudonyms to protect their identities. They wanted to understand who the groups focus on, how they reach those people and the outcomes they hope to achieve.

They found that the groups position themselves as supporters of the Second Amendment, direct their messages to the middle-ground majority and communicate the everyday toll of gun violence using non-polarizing language.

[ … ]

The researchers conclude: “It is neither possible nor necessary to precisely identify the impact of GVPGs in these changes, but we assert it is reasonable to assume that they play an important role.”

I see.  An “important role” (I felt the freedom to put that in quotes since the cited link puts ‘gun debate’ in quotes).  I also put “researchers” in quotes in the title too.  I don’t believe that these people are researchers at all.  In fact, I doubt they have ever found a cure for cancer, developed new methods in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), developed new critical heat flux correlations, or conducted Charpy V-Notch testing on new materials.

The poor, poor gun controllers.  They are so maligned they needed some (ahem) “researchers” to tell people they are just like you and me, only more reasonable.  After all, they only want to control the ammunition you buy, dictate the bullet material, force “smart guns” on you, dictate the magazine capacity, and eventually take away your guns.

But take heart, they are people too.  And so misunderstood.

They don’t limit their malfeasance to dogs.  Humans are just as good a target as animals.

An Australian woman engaged to marry an American next month was shot and killed by a Minneapolis cop Saturday night after calling police to report an incident, leading her family and investigators to question what caused the deadly shooting.

The woman, identified as Justine Damond, 40, was killed in the late-night shooting in the city’s Fulton neighborhood, Fox 9 reported. She reportedly had called to report an assault.

“Two Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call of a possible assault just north of the 5100 block of Washburn Avenue S. just before 11:30 p.m. Saturday,” the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a news release. “At one point, an officer fired their weapon, fatally striking a woman.”

Police were trying to determine whether any video of the incident exists. The body cameras of the officers involved were not activated, according to police. No weapon was found at the scene.

And another report.

The family of a woman who was shot to death by Minneapolis police is making a desperate plea for information about the last moments of her life.

Justine Ruszczyk called 911 on Saturday night to report a possible sexual assault in an alley near her home, her fiancé, Don Damond, said in a news conference Monday.

Two police officers responded and one of them killed Ruszczyk. She died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen, an autopsy revealed.

Otherwise, police still haven’t explained how, or why the shooting occurred, Damond said.

Sadly, her family and I have been provided with almost no additional information from law enforcement regarding what happened after police arrived,” a tearful Damond said as he struggled for composure.

When are people going to realize it’s never in their best interests to involve the police in anything?

Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law links a very in depth and insightful commentary and analysis of the National Firearms Act (NFA).  Dave comments concerning SBRs.

In 1934, they were treated as gangster weapons, although I don’t ever recall hearing of gangsters using them. They tended to have their fights at pistol or shotgun range, not at 100+ yards. Originally the minimum barrel length was 18″; then the government discovered it had sold millions of M-1 carbines as surplus, and they had 16.5″ barrels. So the minimum length was reduced to 16″. Which did a nice job of showing how arbitrary it was.

If you follow the link you’ll get to the scholarly paper (PDF), and I highly recommend it to you.  It would be nice if my readers would tackle this document and make some salient points.  There are a lot of observations I could make but just don’t have the time or energy.

One thing I will observe is that on PDF pages 500 and 521, it’s noted that a “pistol” is defined as follows.

[A] weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand, and having (a) a chamber(s) as an integral part(s) of, or permanently aligned with, the bore(s); and (b) a short stock designed to be gripped by one hand and at an angle to and extending below the line of the bore(s).

While some shooting instructors may invoke off-hand or one-handed shooting as a small part of their efforts because of possible hand-to-hand combat situations, reaching for reloads, attempting to keep an attacker from taking the slide out of battery, or other reasons, this is usually what we might call “beyond design basis.”

No instructor in his right mind today would actually teach that it’s appropriate or preferable to shoot a pistol or revolver with a single hand.  That’s how much the science has evolved since passage of the NFA.

It’s an old, antiquated, worthless, useless, tangled, self-contradictory, laughable abomination, and the more the Congress and Senate (and by extension, the ATF) hang on to this ridiculous document, the more absurd they look.

As usual, reader remarks concerning the study are welcome.

No, not you.  I’m talking to Jeff Sanders writing for PJM.

I have just completed the ALICE training course on dealing with an active shooter situation. If your business has not gone through this, you need to get them on board. Immediately. This is simply some of the best training I have ever been through. And it does not involve using firearms at all.

We have all heard about the tragedies at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Virginia Tech where an active shooter massacred people. Sadly, this sort of thing is probably not going away any time soon. How should people caught in this situation respond? Not everyone is going to carry a gun. (I am a concealed carry weapons instructor and strongly support the 2nd Amendment. But let’s face it, many people simply are not going to carry, and many should NOT carry a firearm.)

Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat. There is training, however, that uses our natural God-given abilities that even children can use, and it’s in the ALICE training seminars.

“ALICE” is the acronym for a series of responses: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. You do not need to do all of these responses, or in the order spelled out in the acronym. You do whatever your situation demands at the moment.

Oh good Lord!  I’m so tired of hearing this claptrap I don’t know what to do except call it out for the bullshit it is.  It’s effective bullshit for the masses, just witness the comments at the linked article, or the link that sent me there to begin with.  Let me explain what this is all about.  Security contractors know that the progressive heads of corporations won’t allow their employees to carry firearms for self defense, but those same employees also know that run, hide and fight is ridiculous and sets them up to be sheep led to the slaughter on the altar of those progressive dreams of utopia.  What to do?

Enter, “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.”  It sounds so much better, right?  Except there is no difference since employees are unarmed and helpless.  The money quote is this: “Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat.”

That’s a lie and the writer knows it, as does every security contractor who purveys this bullshit (or if he actually believes it he has poor judgment).  We’ve seen otherwise, from the young lady who had a gun to her head, reached down, unholstered her firearm, and shot the assailant.  Or consider the elderly folk who have acted in self defense, most of them essentially untrained.  I’m not advocating getting no training.  What I am advocating is that it’s possible to defend your life without the supposedly super Ninja warrior stress control training that infantry goes through.

And the notion that the police are trained to that standard is absurd.  Most police never discharge their weapons in self defense.  Neither, for that matter, do Soldiers and Marines who aren’t infantry.  That is a myth.  The bottom line is that if you are left unarmed by your employer, you are left as sheep to be slaughtered on the altar of the progressive utopian dream.

And every security contractor who teaches corporate security knows it.  Every … single … one.

KXAN.com:

ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) — A Texas Ranger stationed in Austin exercised “poor judgment” in an incident where he pulled over and pointed his gun at a driver who flipped him off in traffic according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

During the incident Round Rock police rushed to an intersection along Interstate 35 after a call for help from the driver who was on the phone with a 911 operator saying someone is trying to pull him over in an unmarked vehicle.

“It’s a white pickup truck and the guys wearing a suit. And he brake checked me and I went around him on the right side, gave him the finger, and he turned all these lights and sirens on”, said the motorist to the 911 dispatcher.

Moments later, before officers arrive, the man following the driver points a gun at him after they stop at the red light.

Eventually, Round Rock police show up and discovered the man who pulled the gun is Texas Ranger Michael Smith, driving an unmarked DPS pickup truck.

The driver, David Vancuran, was fuming and told officers he wanted to talk to the Ranger’s boss, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “I want the director of DPS down here to talk to this guy, he doesn’t deserve to be doing that. And then when I ask him who he is, all I see is a gun, said Vancuran.

Ranger Smith claims Vancuran almost crashed into his truck as traffic in front of him slowed. “He goes around me real fast, shoots me the bird, then side swipes my truck”, said Smith.

Ranger Smith tells the investigating officer that he only got out of his truck to talk to the driver, but had to pull out his gun after he fears for his safety. “I get out of the truck, I demand he get out. He puts the car in reverse. I draw my gun.”

The state issued pickup truck is not equipped with a dash camera, so it’s the Ranger’s word against the driver in this incident last February.

But KXAN has also obtained evidence Ranger Smith was not exactly telling the truth about when he pulled his pistol according to a crucial part of the 911 call in which Smith is heard screaming and banging on the car.

In a written statement sent via email, the agency contradicts Smith’s own version of exactly when he pulled out his gun. “While exiting the vehicle, the Ranger placed his weapon in a low, ready position, due to a perceived threat, ” said the agency in a statement emailed to KXAN.

DPS also wrote: “Our employee acted inconsistent with policy, exercised poor judgement, and conducted himself in an unprofessional and discourteous manner – all of which are unacceptable…The department has taken corrective action with this employee regarding the policy infractions.

The agency also did not respond to questions about the differing versions of when Ranger Smith drew his weapon during the stop.

Texas Department of Public Safety responds:

The traffic stop initiated by the Ranger was lawful; however, his actions failed to reflect the high standards expected of our employees.

On February 7, a Texas Ranger attempted to stop an individual who was driving aggressively, including nearly sideswiping the Ranger’s vehicle on I-35 in the Georgetown area. The Ranger was driving an unmarked police unit and attempted to make the traffic stop by activating his emergency lights, and subsequently contacted DPS Communications to request Highway Patrol assistance. The driver ultimately pulled over on the I-35 frontage road in Round Rock. While exiting the vehicle, the Ranger placed his weapon in a low, ready position, due to a perceived threat, namely believing the car was being placed in reverse. Round Rock Police Department subsequently arrived on scene, and the driver was ultimately released with no additional enforcement action taken. The Ranger immediately reported the incident to his supervisor.

It’s morphed from sideswiped my car to nearly sideswiped my car.  So let me get this straight.  You (Texas Ranger) were apparently tailgating somebody, they didn’t like it, brake checked you, and you unholstered your weapon and stopped him in a rage.

And the stop was “lawful” according to your superiors.  And I would have been charged with brandishing a deadly weapon, disturbing the peace, reckless driving, and probably assault with a deadly weapon had I done that.

Okay.  Got it.  Because LEOs are better and have more rights than me.

Newsday:

Head of the Harbor Village officials are considering allowing researchers to use dart guns to treat deer in an experimental contraception program intended to shrink the population there.

Residents have complained the roughly 600 deer living in and around the densely wooded North Shore village feast on gardens and treat expensive landscaping like “an open salad bar,” as one person wrote in response to a village survey on residents’ experiences with the animals. Residents also worried about deer colliding with vehicles on the village’s winding, unlit roads, and the animals’ role as hosts for the ticks that carry Lyme disease.

New York State’s preferred method of deer population control is hunting, which many village residents reject as inhumane. So trustees decided last year to pursue nonlethal means of population control and contacted researchers from the Humane Society of the United States and Tufts University exploring use of porcine zona pellucid, or PZP, a substance derived from pig ovaries that uses an animal’s own immune system to prevent pregnancy in wildlife populations.

Head of the Harbor would become the second community on Long Island, after Fire Island, to host the work, which researchers estimate will cost $242,215 and take place over six years. The money would come from the village, foundations and private donors.

Eric Stubbs, a member of the village’s Deer Management Advisory Committee and an economist who commutes by train to New York City, said he sees deer on his morning drive to the station about once a week. “They’re a significant presence,” he said.

Most of his neighbors are eager for the project to start, he said. “It has implications not just for us, but for towns all over Long Island . . . It’s one of the few things where you can get majority support,” he said.
Researchers use dart guns to dose female deer with PZP or sedatives so they can be injected by hand with the substance.

“What we’re hoping to do long-term is offer a solution for wildlife managers to use for areas where hunting or lethal means are not feasible or kosher with the community,” said Kali Pereira, HSUS senior wildlife manager.

HSUS dart guns – Pereira called them dart projectors – are similar to paintball guns and powered by carbon dioxide, she said. Only trained researchers use them, she said.

But the same law that effectively outlaws hunting in Head of the Harbor could keep the researchers from their work. It bans discharge of most projectile weapons including those, like the researchers use, that are gas- or air-powered.

“The activity they’re seeking to import into the village does not comply with their own local law,” said Assemb. Tom McKevitt (R-East Meadow), a lawyer who specializes in municipal law.

No-discharge laws are common across Long Island, he said. Although Head of the Harbor’s code makes exceptions for police and for non-officers who discharge a weapon “provided it is reasonably necessary for the protection of life or property,” McKevitt said it would be “a stretch” to apply that clause to the defense of perennials from hungry deer. Violators face fines of up to $250 and jail time.

You Yankees are so janky.  You’re planning to spend a quarter of a million dollars to neuter deer in order to do what hunting has done for decades so well – control the herd population.

Oh well, since money grows on trees this is a viable option for you, I guess. And hey, at least you aren’t sending the king’s men into the king’s forests to cull the population because no one else is good enough to do that.

American Spectator:

Gun-rights activists often express the view that Americans will not easily give up their rights to gun ownership even if the laws eventually outlaw — or at least greatly restrict — the freedom of individuals to own firearms. The scenario they depict is bleak but simple: When armed agents come to their doors to confiscate people’s arsenals, some of those people can be expected to fight back.

Advocates further assume widespread public support for private gun ownership and expect prominent Second Amendment organizations and Republican legislators to raise hell whenever gun regulations start approximating confiscation.

The experience in California, in particular, suggests an entirely different scenario.

From what I’ve seen, the public often will support aggressive new restrictions. Gun owners will meekly hand over their weapons to agents. Gun-rights groups will quietly protest, but have little sway. Republican legislators will make things worse as they try to prove their commitment to taking guns out of the hands of “criminals.” The erosion of our fundamental gun rights will take place so slowly that few will protest too much.

The latest example involves Proposition 63, a statewide initiative that mandates background checks for ammunition purchases and prohibits the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines. The state already banned the sale of magazines that hold more than ten ammo rounds in 2000. As a federal judge explained in a recent ruling, starting July 1, “any previously law-abiding person in California” who owns such a magazine “will begin their life of crime.”

[ … ]

I’ve called this the “infrastructure of confiscation.” Law-enforcement officials are mostly for it, of course. They want to know who owns guns when they are called to a home for a disturbance. “The presence of a legally owned possessed firearm bought to protect the home may get totally innocent people killed by the police who casually use SWAT for drug search warrants especially if they register,” said the late Joe McNamara, the former San Jose police chief and fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

After that tragic Connecticut shooting, the state passed a far-reaching firearms registration law. TV stations reported that gun owners lined up around the block to comply with the new requirements. Of course, that’s so. Most gun owners, myself included, are law-abiding folks, who almost certainly and properly would peacefully follow any new laws that were passed.

Well, he’s certainly right about the infrastructure of confiscation.  Note that if the fedgov knows you have a firearm in the house, any police attention, spurious or not, will most certainly result in danger for you and a dead dog, if you have one.

But as for lining up to turn in weapons, I’m not so sure this analysis is correct.  While some people did, the whole regulatory scheme in Connecticut and New York (SAFE Act) was so onerous that they saw massive non-compliance.  I suspect that the SAFE act will always be used after the fact to add other charges when they have arrested someone for another crime, not for the purpose of door-to-door gun confiscations.

What do you say?  Is this analysis in the American Spectator accurate, or has he missed the boat and failed to understand the resolve of the remaining patriots among us?

Chicago Tribune:

When a 12-year-old kid is arrested with a gun, you can’t blame the child. It’s the parents’ fault.

The child police took into custody Tuesday night after finding him in a West Side alley with a handgun in his possession deserves our compassion. But more than that, he needs help — because his parents aren’t doing their job.

There is so much about this situation that we do not know. We don’t know his mom and dad, and we certainly know nothing about their lives. We don’t know what his home environment is like, whether he even had a hot meal last night.

We don’t know why he was hanging out in an alley at 8 p.m. when he should have been inside perhaps watching TV or reading a book before getting ready for bed. All we know is that he should not have been out there alone, and that his parents should have been paying closer attention.

Police received multiple calls from neighbors in Lawndale about someone in the alley with a gun. When police arrived in the 1800 block of South Kostner Avenue, they found the kid. And when they searched him, they discovered the weapon.

Thirty minutes later, they located his mother. The child was charged as a juvenile with unlawful use of a weapon. The mother went free. Perhaps she should have been charged with neglect.

[ … ]

Perhaps after this, their parents will step up and act like adults. If not, I fear what might happen to these three young boys in the future.

Let’s not stereotypically condemn them to a life of crime. It is possible that they can get on the right track all by themselves. But chances are, without intervention, they will end up in trouble.

[ … ]

None of these kids were born bad. They’re simply exhibiting learned behavior.

That’s what John Dewey would have you believe.  You’ve learned “the gouge” well in college, ma’am.  All it takes is the state to do the right things, turn parents into adults, and then the children will learn the right things rather than the wrong things.

There is no concept of sin, righteousness, volitional choice, or anything that makes a man a man.  He’s just a tabula rasa.  Except not really, and you will always get the remedy wrong when the diagnosis is wrong.

For us, guns are wonderful tools in the right hands with righteous intent, man is sinful from birth and in need of a savior, and the state can’t save anybody, not even itself.  God is sovereign, man is accountable, and His law is as immutable as He is.

What you’re witnessing is the result of the destruction of the family and the replacement of it and God with the state.  Your god will always fail you, ma’am.  You may as well bow down to a wooden totem pole.

ABC13.com:

AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) —

In less than two months, Texas will enact a new open carry law for knives and swords.

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1935 into law.

Starting Sept. 1, it will be legal for adults in Texas to open carry knives, daggers and swords.

The law bans long knives from being carried into schools, colleges, churches and bars.

Read more about House Bill 1935 here.

Well good, but only sort of.  As I’ve pointed out, every man carries a knife everywhere.  Or at least he should.  But what’s up with this continued prohibition of knives into places of worship?  As if somehow one is safe from wicked men who would do harm while they are worshipping.

In fact, if you ponder for a moment what’s happening in most Christian worship services, you are likely at your most vulnerable, both you and your family.  You are in a crowd, there is limited ingress and egress, your attention is focused somewhere else other than threat assessment, and so on.

It’s the same silliness that pervades lawmakers’ prohibition of guns in worship.  Ignore it, and while open carry of guns is now legal in Texas, we need to continue to make changes in the law obviating the requirement to have a permit at all, and minimizing the number of businesses that post against open carry (I know, I made a recent visit to Texas).  It’s especially bad in Austin.

There is more work to do.  In the mean time, if you live in Texas, carry a large fixed blade knife with you (like a Ka-Bar) and send me a picture whenever this becomes legal.  Or before.