Charles C.W. Cooke:

Is it cherished in Britain, a nation that has been on the front lines of late? In this area, no, it is not. I traveled back to my home country just after the latest terror attack to cover the recent elections. While there, I put Noble’s idea to my family and friends, and was met with the sort of incredulous, mouth-agape reaction that I’d expect if I had suggested invading Norway with just a pocket square for protection. “If these attacks become quotidian,” I asked, “do you think that the British will need to rethink guns?” The answers: No, no, no, no and no. Indeed, my interlocutors could scarcely have been more emphatic if I’d advised them to buy a fighter jet.

The British, to put it lightly, do not like guns. They don’t want guns. And, in all likelihood, they’re not going to change their minds on that point. Americans who are wondering if the Brits are on the verge of a sea change here should understand this: They’re not. Not even close. Culture matters, and the United Kingdom has shifted on this. In 1688, the right to bear arms was cherished; today, it is seen as a relic. Were a politician to run on the promise of liberalizing the gun laws, he would lose—badly. This is, to borrow a line from Monty Python, a dead parrot.

Well, that’s too bad.  Then they will suffer under the yoke of violence and Islamic Sharia.  There can be no other end for them.  Keep a stiff upper lip, Brits.  It’s the English way.

As for Charles, he wants liberty, he wants the lack of such a yoke of bondage, but since he doesn’t understand where America’s freedom comes from, he will never really understand guns or their availability in the U.S.  You see, Americans retain the right to replace their government, by force if necessary.  This comes from the Calvinian concept of covenant, passed through to the pastors, thinkers and other men who risked their lives, families and wealth to secure their liberty from a tyrant.  I’ve discussed this in great detail before, and so I won’t rehearse it again here.  But suffice it to say that God gives me rights and duties, not any piece of parchment.  That piece of parchment represents the agreement of the government to live in accordance with said stipulations, just as do I.

The reason for my reticence on Charles?  He is an atheist.

ABC:

John Howard’s gun laws are collapsing, gun control advocates say, as they compile a stocktake on states and territories’ compliance with the National Firearms Agreement.

The agreement — which is non-binding, and underpinned by state and territory firearms laws — was negotiated by the then prime minister in 1996 after 35 people died in the Port Arthur massacre.

Preliminary findings from Gun Control Australia’s report on the issue indicate a “chain reaction” has been speeding up since 2008. The organisation’s chair, Samantha Lee, told the ABC that changes often began with gun lobby wins in NSW.

“As one of the bigger states passes laws to water down their legislation, the other states are following suit … the result being, our national approach to gun control is eroding,” Ms Lee said.

The audit is set to be released next month, and comes as states and territories are moving to implement an update of the agreement signed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) last December.

The main outcome of that review was tougher restrictions on lever-action shotguns, after an uproar about the arrival of a new weapon, the Turkish-made Adler A110.

The Adler came in 5- and 7-shot versions, with the latter banned for import by federal justice minister Michael Keenan in 2015.

Shooters were outraged at the ban, believing there was no new technology in the Adler, and no evidence that lever-action shotguns were being used in crime.

The backlash from shooters has been so strong that some states and territories may baulk at implementing the revised national agreement. So far, only NSW and the ACT have implemented it.

Coalition governments have fractured over the ban, with several federal National Party MPs supporting a disallowance motion by Senator David Leyonhjelm in November, and Liberal MLC Peter Phelps crossing the floor when the enabling legislation reached the NSW Parliament in May.

NSW Police Minister Troy Grant took a public stand against the tougher restrictions until he resigned as deputy premier late last year, at which point NSW fell into line with other states and signed up to the revised agreement.

Mr Grant said at the time that he was standing up for the rights of law-abiding gun owners, and did not believe there was any evidence that lever-action shotguns were more dangerous than other weapons available to recreational shooters.

But Background Briefing can reveal that before his resignation, he received — and then overrode — confidential advice about the contentious laws from his own police force.

The heavily redacted advice, signed off by the NSW Police Firearms Registry and obtained under freedom of information laws by NSW Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge, says that improved technology means that lever-action shotguns “are now similar, in terms of their rapidity, to pump-action shotguns”.

Pump-action shotguns are highly restricted under the National Firearms Agreement.

Although the document did not make any recommendation, Mr Shoebridge said the clear implication of the expert police opinion was that circulation of lever-action shotguns should be just as restricted.

Okay, so we’re talking about lever action shotgun tube magazine capacity.  They’re not even close yet.  They have a long way to go, the police will always take the side of the controllers, and the non-binding nature of the national agreement (a fact which I didn’t know) give an avenue for replacement of the local and state leaders to turn back the real control over handguns, semi-automatic rifles and other weapons.

Codrea:

“Skyhorse Publishing is about to release my next book, which is devoted to great and fatal government-caused disasters. The title is …. ‘I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Kill You: The Human Cost of Official Negligence,’” attorney and author David T. Hardy informed AmmoLand Shooting Sports News Thursday. “Texas City, the Tuskegee Syphilis study, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Fast and Furious, the VA hospital scandal – time after time, government employees kill Americans by negligence, stupidity, or agency corruption, and time after time they escape all legal accountability.”

Hardy’s should be a familiar name to longtime readers of this columnist’s work. His contributions to advancing the right to keep and bear arms have been chronicled extensively on The War On Guns blog, which has over the years featured numerous posts on his numerous books, his groundbreaking “In Search of the Second Amendment” documentary, his observations on the Of Arms & the Law blog, and his legal work, including cases and law review articles.

I saw this announcement a few days ago and intend to place my order.

John Stossel:

Have a gun license? Plan to bring your gun to my hometown? Don’t.

Mean New York authorities will make your life miserable.

Patricia Jordan and her daughter flew here from her home state of Georgia. She wanted her gun nearby for protection.

Jordan obeyed all the Transportation Security Administration’s rules: She put her gun in a locked TSA-approved case with its bullets separate. She informed the airline that she had a gun. The airline had no problem with that.

In New York City, she kept the gun locked in her hotel room. She never needed it, but her daughter told me, “I was glad she brought it just in case something did happen.”

When leaving the city, Jordan followed the TSA’s rules again. At the airline counter, she again told the agent she wanted to check her gun. But this time, she was told: “Wait.”

“Next thing I know, they’re getting ready to arrest me,” she said.

Her daughter was crying, “Please don’t arrest my mom!” But New York City cops arrested her, jailed her and told her she was guilty of a felony that mandates a minimum 3 1/2 years in jail.

Jordan’s ordeal is not unique. Roughly once a week, New York City locks up people for carrying guns legally licensed by other states.

Another Georgia visitor, Avi Wolf, was jailed although he didn’t even have a gun. He just had part of a gun—an empty magazine—a little plastic box with a small metal spring. He brought it to the city because it wasn’t working well and he thought a New York friend might repair it. He couldn’t believe he was being arrested.

“Somebody could’ve done more damage to an individual with a fork from McDonald’s,” Wolf told me.

Wolf, too, checked with the TSA beforehand. They said, just declare it to TSA agents. So he did.

“I’m telling them… I have a magazine here. It’s empty, no bullets… Next thing I know they’re pulling me over to the side, they’re like, ‘Do you know what you have in your bag?!’ ‘I know what I have in my bag, I told you what I have in my bag.'”

Following TSA instructions didn’t do Wolf any good. “Fast forward about an hour and it was four Port Authority police there. The chief of LaGuardia airport is there, [as if] they thought they found somebody trying to do 9/11 repeat,” he says.

“They asked me if I had a gun license. Of course I had a license. I’m from Georgia, and everybody there’s got a gun license. And they’re like, well, sir, you’re going to be getting arrested now.”

Wolf and Jordan spent less than a day in jail, but each had to pay lawyers $15,000 to bargain the felony charge down to “public disorder.”

Gun owners know to steer clear of New York – the entire state, not just New York City.  The TSA works with transportation of firearms (and they don’t do that very well).  They cannot possibly tell you the laws of the state you plan to visit.

In New York, the entire state, you cannot have a handgun on your person.  Not for self defense, not for any reason.  The best policy is not to visit New York – the entire state – for any reason, at any time.  Ever.  New York is a shit hole.  The same goes for Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, California and Hawaii.

Oh, by the way, besides Remington and Kimber, what firearms manufacturers are still in New York?  Why hasn’t Remington and Kimber shut their doors to operations in the state of New York?  That’s the only remaining question to me.

H/T WRSA.

It occurs to me that the deep state, and all of its actors in the Senate and House, really have no idea how close America is as we speak to dystopia and how difficult this would be for them.

Tyler Yzaguirre:

The United States is a nation built upon individual rights and freedoms.

One in particular that is often fought over is the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” or more simply put, the right to carry a firearm.

Open carry is the act of publicly carrying a firearm on one’s person in plain sight. The majority of states allow citizens to open carry a firearm without a permit.

Surprisingly, Texas is not one of those states.

Now while this may seem shocking at first, most of these open carry states place burdensome restrictions on the act. These include location restrictions such as high schools and certain cities, state buildings, police stations, and shopping malls. With all these restrictions, open carry isn’t as permissible as it sounds.

The First Amendment has historically been much more difficult to limit than the Second, so extending Freedom of Speech to encompass the open display of firearms needs to be addressed. The case for open carrying being protected under the First Amendment can be made through symbolic speech.

The United States Supreme Court has answered the issue of firearms being protected by the Second Amendment through DC v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010). In regards to open carry from a legal perspective, we must look to the state laws rather than the Constitution.

However, there has been no Supreme Court case deciding whether or not the act of open carrying is protected by the First Amendment.

Open carrying a firearm is an action; it is symbolic speech because it is a public statement. As history has shown us, actions and public statements, are protected by the First Amendment under symbolic speech. Examples of this include students in Des Moines wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War, waving flags that may be seen as offensive and even flag burning.

Symbolic speech relies heavily on the context within which it occurs.

According to Delaware’s leading Open Carry organization, “self-defense is the foremost reason for open carry.”Another leading reason as to why law abiding citizens open carry firearms is for educational purposes.

People want to bring attention to the fact that they have the right to bear arms and that they can legally and safely exercise that right.

Well, this is an interesting perspective indeed.  Since I open carry from time to time and have strongly advocated open carry legislation in my neighboring state of South Carolina, I have addressed the issue of open carry with my readers.

I have said in no uncertain terms that I do not open carry to “make a point.”  I open carry because I hate concealed carry.  It’s uncomfortable and tactically inferior to open carry, and in the summer if I conceal I sweat my weapon, which not only causes rust and corrosion, but makes it a lint-magnet as well.  I have very practical reasons for open carry.

But I have also made it clear that any calls to LEOs because someone openly carries would be a good opportunity for 911 operators to educate the public: “What do you mean he was carrying a gun, ma’am?  Was he brandishing it, holding it, waving it around or threatening someone with it?”  “No?  Okay then, he isn’t violating any law in North Carolina by simply carrying a holstered firearm.”

There is no prima facie reason that open carry cannot be legitimately for the reason of making a statement or for education purposes.  I’ve just never personally taken that stance for myself.  But the author makes a good case for such behavior being protected by the constitution, and I see this as ripe for litigation.

NJ1015.com:

Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg heads to Washington for the day Thursday, waiting to kick-start a 15-year quest to require personalized “smart guns” on the shelves of New Jersey gun retailers.

Such guns would have technology keeping them from being fired by anyone other than the registered owner or, as envisioned in the case of police officers, the officers and their partners. Current New Jersey law requires them to be exclusively sold in New Jersey once they’re viable – which may be unintentionally undercutting their path to the marketplace.

Weinberg was invited by the head of CeaseFire Washington state to attend Thursday’s event in the nation’s capital, featuring a former United States drug czar and the results of a survey on the safety concerns of 400 law enforcement professionals.

“They’re wanting to move toward the child-proof handgun technology, so we’ll hear the results of that survey. We have a panel. Some people who are involved in the research and development will also be there,” Weinberg said.

Yea, I’m sure that’s what they’re wanting – to move to smart guns for the sake of the children.  Just not for them, but for everyone else.

I hope they are successful fielding a “smart gun” for the cops to try out first.  And once all of that money has been spent, I think the cops in New Jersey should keep them.  Forever.

In light of this, I renew my challenge for any designer to use the NRC fault tree handbook and demonstrate that a “smart gun” is as reliable as any other.  If he can do that, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat and eat it.

Tag: Smart Guns

The Firearm Blog:

The US Army has released a solicitation for a new 7.62mm infantry rifle to replace the M4. The Interim Combat Service Rifle program, known to be in the works since April of this year, would replace M4 Carbines in use with combat units with a new weapon in the 7.62x51mm caliber. The new solicitation requires companies to submit 7 weapons plus ancillaries for testing, and includes the promise of up to 8 Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs, non-contract transactions), leading to the eventual selection of 1 weapon for a contract of 50,000 units.

The primary justification for the ICSR program are improved ceramic body armors that are resistant to existing forms of small arms ammunition. The logic goes that the Army’s new 5.56mm M855A1 roundcannot penetrate these new armors, and therefore the service must switch to a new round. However, this is misleading, as current 7.62mm M80A1 is incapable of penetrating these body armors either – and specialty tungsten cored ammunition in both 5.56mm and 7.62mm calibers are capable of penetrating armor of this type. The US Army seems to be banking on its yet-undescribed XM1158 ADVAP round to bridge this gap – however Chief Milley himself admitted in testimony to Congress that the ADVAP’s design could be applied to either 7.62mm or 5.56mm ammunition.

So the bolt action sniper rifles aren’t good enough.  They want a semi-automatic in 7.62mm (presumably the NATO round).  And also presumably so that the standard soldier can be as incompetent shooting 7.62mm as she is shooting 5.56mm, while she also has to carry more weight.  Sounds like a plan to me.

Or the Army could actually teach their soldiers to shoot 5.56mm with proper fire control and using fire and maneuver small unit combat tactics, techniques and procedures, sort of like they’re supposed to.  That way, they could let the designated marksmen shoot the long range shots while they conserve their ammunition for a protracted engagement.  Oh, that’s right.  I forgot.  The Army doesn’t have designated marksmen – the Corps does.

A new cartridge and/or a new gun can’t do what poor doctrine doesn’t do.

The Southside Trail Loop in Croft State Park runs up the side of a mountain in one direction, and along a river in the other, and which part you do first depends on whether you go clockwise or counterclockwise.  The uphill is strenuous to the point of being grueling, and the downhill part is very fast and technical.  The total loop is about nine miles, but it feels like fifteen.

Along the river there is some relatively flat terrain in an old growth forest that is absolutely enchanting.

As I posted, I recently made a hiking trip to Mount Mitchell State Park with my son Joseph.  Along the way (during a visit to a store to pick up some souvenirs for my son’s friend), I saw this sign.

“Firearms and lethal weapons are prohibited except by permit.”  Now, this causes a whole host of problems, and so let’s begin our discussion.

First of all, North Carolina is a traditional open carry state, and there is nothing in any statute that excepts the state parks as being areas where one cannot open carry or stipulates the manner of carry, whether a handgun or long gun (rifle or shotgun).  Furthermore, hunters carry firearms into the park all the time, hunting mostly for black bear during the summer and fall.

This all caused me to research the regulations, or at least, the publicly available statements by the park service, concerning firearms in North Carolina state parks.  I landed on this web site, where we read the following concerning firearms.

Firearms and other weapons are prohibited except that those with a proper permit may possess a concealed handgun in permitted areas and under the requirements of North Carolina G.S. 14-415.11. All firearms and weapons are prohibited in state park visitor centers and park offices.

This makes it sound as if firearms are prohibited unless they are concealed, since it is only under those conditions that a permit is legally required.  In other words, it appears that this statement on the park web site is a spurious prohibition of open carry in contravention of state law (which does not speak to the issue of open carry, and simple carry of a handgun in a holster has never been considered carrying a weapon “to the terror of the public” or brandishing a weapon).

The statute to which this statement refers (North Carolina G.S. 14-415.11) simply makes it clear that “Any person who has a concealed handgun permit may carry a concealed handgun on the grounds or waters of a park within the State Parks System as defined in G.S. 143B-135.44.”  It says nothing about prohibition of open carry, in parks or anywhere else.  Nor does any other North Carolina statute speak to the issue of open carry.

So this leaves us with only two apparent options for interpretation of the signage and the statement on the park web site.  The first option is that it is intended to be an end run around the legislature who has not spoken to the issue of open carry in state parks, or anywhere else for that matter.  The state park service is making up their own laws.

The second option is that this signage is a mistake, but even more than that, contains material false information and is therefore unlawful due to its false and misleading information.  Frankly, either option means that the park service is behaving in an unlawful manner, where they are making up their own laws, or simply communicating material false information to park visitors.

Which is it, and is the park service aware of their unlawful behavior on this issue?