Evening Standard:

London‘s murder rate has overtaken New York City‘s for the first time ever, according to a new report.

February marked the first month the UK capital saw more murders than New York, with 15 dead (nine aged 30 or younger).

According to the report in the Sunday Times, London also suffered 22 fatal stabbings and shootings in March, higher than the 21 in the Big Apple.

Both cities have similarly sized populations of around 8.5m people. New York City’s murder rate has decreased by around 87 per cent since the 1990s.

Meanwhile, London’s has grown by nearly 40 per cent in just three years, not including deaths caused by terrorist attacks.

On Saturday a murder probe was launched after a 36-year-old woman was killed in what is believed to be the 30th incident of fatal knife crime in the capital this year.

[ … ]

Britain’s most senior police officer recently said social media was partially to blame for the soaring rate of knife crime in the UK.

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said websites and mobile phone applications such as YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram were partially to blame for the bloodshed.

This seems impossible.  Britain has gun control.  Britain has knife control.  How are all of these guns and knives ending up in the wrong hands?

Hmm … yea, just do away with Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube and everything will be okay.  That’ll fix the problem.  I’m sure of it.

Sheesh.  And the Brits think they’re all that and more, yes?

I had a run-in with Dave before.  It looks like the things I sense invariably come to pass.

Even gun rights advocates, who are afraid of government abuse, say it appears to be working…“We’ve seen the downside of people who are distraught or crazy taking out their problems on the general public,” said Dave Workman of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation. “We don’t want that to happen here.”

That all depends upon whether you consider Dave Workman a “gun rights advocate.”  I don’t.  Oh, and by the way, give me a legally and logically defensible definition of the word “crazy,” Dave?  Or “distraught?”

From one thing to another, and another, and another until all the feelings about anecdotal experiences have been flushed out of his mind into the world.  Or something like that.

Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9-millimeter pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two 30-round magazines in the passenger seat beside me. I was driving down from the mountains to meet a fellow I didn’t know at a Cracker Barrel off I-40 in the North Carolina foothills. He was looking to buy a Kel-Tec Sub-2000, and I had one for sale. Other than that, I didn’t know him from Adam except for a few messages back and forth on Facebook.

We were both members of a Facebook group where people post pictures of firearms and buyers private-message to ask questions and make offers — sometimes cash, sometimes trade. I needed money to pay a buddy for an old ’70s model Lark teardrop trailer, and that rifle wasn’t doing anything but taking up space in the safe.

What I was doing was perfectly legal. In North Carolina, long-gun transfers by private sellers require no background checks. Likewise, it’s perfectly legal to sell a handgun privately so long as the buyer has a purchase permit or a concealed-carry license. But as I headed up the exit to the restaurant where we agreed to meet, I felt uneasy. I was within the law, but it didn’t feel as if I should have been.

He was backed into a space parallel to the dumpster, a black Ford F-250 with a covered bed, just as he described on Facebook Messenger. As I pulled in, he stepped out. He smiled, and I nodded.

“You can just leave it in the seat so we don’t make anybody nervous,” he said as I rolled down my window. There were families in rocking chairs in front of the restaurant. Customers were walking to their cars to get back on the road.

I climbed out of my truck so he could look the rifle over while I counted the money he’d left on his seat. He was about my age, somewhere in his early to mid-30s, white guy with a thick beard. He spoke with a heavy Southern accent not much different from my own. Said he built houses for a living, and that was about all the small talk between us. He liked the rifle. I needed the cash. We shook hands, and off we went.

If you’re wondering what the hell the point of all of that was and what he’s trying to communicate other than sharing an anecdotal experience, you’re not alone.  It’s all entirely legal as it should be.  It’s called a person-to-person transfer.  Let’s continue with his feelings for a while longer.

Where I live in the mountains of North Carolina, I am not alone. With fewer than a dozen guns in the safe, I wouldn’t even be considered a gun nut. Most of my friends have concealed-carry licenses and pistols on their person. If there are 10 of us in a room, there are most likely 10 loaded firearms, probably more, with a few of us keeping backups in ankle holsters. Rarely do we mention what we carry. We don’t touch the guns or draw them from their holsters. They are unseen and unspoken of, but always there.

I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t around guns. When I was a kid, there was a gun rack hanging on the wall in the living room. My father kept a single-shot .410 and an old bolt action .22, small-game guns, though he didn’t hunt anymore. I can remember watching older boys shoot skeet at a junkyard in the woods behind my house, my fingers plugged in my ears while orange clays turned to smoke against a backdrop of post oak and poplar. I can remember the first time my father taught me to shoot a rifle, how he had me sit on the concrete driveway and use my knee for a rest, aiming for a cardboard target in a honeysuckle thicket across the road. I think I was 8 or 9. I pulled the stock in too high on my shoulder, and craned my neck awkwardly to line up the iron sights. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew the rules: Always assume a firearm is loaded. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Know your target and what’s beyond it.

Okay, so here we are in the South where guns are ubiquitous, and he is sharing an experience and his feelings about that, and we’re left wondering about the point of all of this.  So let’s continue a while longer.

The second and last time I had a gun put to my head it was by the police. After a drunken fight, I left a friend’s apartment to walk five miles and sleep on the porch of a buddy’s house across the river. I was walking down the side of Wilkinson Boulevard in Belmont.

Okay, I know right where he’s talking about.  So what happened?

I was carrying a shoe box. I saw a police cruiser pass me and make a U-turn at a stoplight up ahead. When the Crown Vic came back, the driver jumped the median and next thing I knew there were multiple cars, lights flashing, officers ordering me to the ground.

They had their guns drawn. There was a K-9 unit, and the German shepherd wouldn’t quit barking. I was lying flat on my stomach, and one officer came forward and put his knee in my back, his service weapon pushed into the base of my skull. They let the dog close enough that I could feel him barking against my ear. They said I matched the description of someone who’d burglarized some houses nearby. They asked what was in the shoe box, and I stuttered, “Papers.” They asked if they opened the box if there was anything inside that would hurt them. With my face in the grass and the officer’s weight making it hard to breathe, I was so terrified that I couldn’t mutter a single word. I just shook my head, and they opened that box to find nothing but a stack of notebook papers, a pile of half-assed stories I’d written. They told me I could get up, and I stood there trembling while they apologized. They gave me a ride across the river and dropped me off at the Mecklenburg County line, told me they were sorry but they couldn’t take me any farther.

So at least that night the cops in Belmont were a bunch of ignorant hicks roughing innocent folks up and assuming something for which they had absolutely no basis and which they could have ascertained with a little intelligent conversation.  Actually, I suspect this was the Gaston County Police, but who knows because he doesn’t say?  We’ll come back to this in a moment.  Let’s continue for a while longer.

Just before the deer strolled behind a cedar sapling, I touched the trigger, and the .308 blew apart the morning. A hundred and fifty grains of copper-jacketed lead hit just behind the shoulder and blood-shot the backside to pudding. The buck stooped forward and sprinted, back legs driving him over tangled ground. He made it 40 yards before he crashed. From my stand, I could just make out the white of his stomach through the brush. I watched his ribs rise with each breath, that breathing slowing, slowing, then gone.

There is a sadness that only hunters know, a moment when lament overshadows any desire for celebration.

Hunting isn’t for everybody, but I’m still not sure what this all has to do with anything.  For the love of God, let’s get somewhere, okay?

When the trooper had my license and registration, he went to his cruiser. In a few minutes, he came back to the window and issued me a warning for speeding. I asked if there was anything I could’ve done differently to make him more comfortable when he first approached the truck. The trooper told me what I’d said was fine. He said that some officers might have been uncomfortable with where the pistol was located, being holstered near my wallet, but that he felt we had a good rapport. Depending on the officer, some might have asked me to step out of the truck so they could remove the weapon. He smiled and told me: “But this is South Carolina. Most every car I pull over has a gun.”

Frankly, I think we should be more worried about what the cop intends to do with his weapon than what the cops think about the fact that we have one.  But let’s continue still.

Last summer I drove back to Charlotte to visit my father for his birthday. While I was there, I went into a Cabela’s store in Fort Mill, S.C., to buy him a new depth finder for his fishing boat. After I found what I was looking for, I headed across the store to see if there were any good deals on ammo.

There were floor displays of AR-15s, and probably a hundred or more other rifles and shotguns for anyone to walk up and hold. I watched a kid about 8 or 9 pick up one of those ARs and shoulder it to the center of his chest. He held the gun awkwardly, cocked his head hard to the side, squeezed one eye closed to aim and dry-fired the weapon. I watched two men, presumably his father and grandfather, smile and laugh, then break out their cellphones to snap a few pictures.

I remembered how when I was his age, I used to love going to the sporting-goods section of Walmart to look at fishing lures and camouflage clothes. I’d walk over near the register and push the manual turntable on the curio display to look at all the rifles and shotguns. There were usually a few big game guns — a gray stock Remington 783 in .30-06, maybe a Marlin 336 lever action — a couple of pump shotguns, a single shot .410 or 20-gauge. There were always Ruger 10/22s and Marlin Model 60s, the .22LRs kids unwrapped when their grandfathers gave them their first rifles for a birthday or Christmas. There were always guns, but nothing like the assault weapons that line the shelves today.

Maybe it’s how I was raised and the types of firearms my family kept, but the idea of owning a rifle designed for engaging human targets out to 600 meters just never interested me. I keep a Savage 10 in .308 to hunt whitetail and hogs. I have a CZ 920 that’s absolute hell on a dove field. I have a handful of .22 rifles that I use for plinking at the range and hunting squirrels and rabbits each winter. Then there are the weapons I keep for defense — the shotgun by the bed, the pistols — firearms whose sole purpose would be to take human life if I were left with no other choice. I’ve witnessed how quickly a moment can turn to a matter of life and death. I live in a region where 911 calls might not bring blue lights for an hour. Whether it’s preparation or paranoia, I plan for worst-case scenarios and trust no one but myself for my survival.

My friends see no difference between the guns I own and their ARs. One or two of them rationalize assault weapons the same way I justify what sits by my bed. When I ask if those rifles are really the best option for home defense, they joke about the minute hand of the doomsday clock inching closer to midnight. They post Instagram photos of Sig Sauer MCXs and tac vests loaded with extra magazines, their bug-out bags by the door as they wait for the end of the world.

But a majority defend their ARs the same way I defend the guns I use for plinking and hunting. They say they own them because they’re fun at the range and affordable to shoot. They use the rifles for punching paper, a few for shooting coyotes. Every weekend they fire hundreds of rounds from custom rifles they’ve spent thousands of dollars building. They add bump stocks and Echo Triggers to increase rates of fire and step as close to Title II of the federal Gun Control Act as legally possible without the red tape and paperwork. They fire bullets into Tannerite targets that blow pumpkins into the sky.

None of them see a connection between the weapons they own and the shootings at Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland. They see mug shots of James Holmes, Omar Mateen, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz — “crazier than a shithouse rat,” they say. “If it hadn’t been that rifle, he’d have done it with something else.” They fear that what starts as an assault-weapons ban will snowball into an attack on everything in the safe. I don’t believe that politicians are going to ban ordinary guns or overturn the Second Amendment, but I understand their reasoning because I understand what’s at stake. I think about that boy picking up that AR in Cabela’s, and I’m torn between the culture I grew up with and how that culture has devolved.

Aha!  We’re finally there.  A gun dude is sharing his feelings about how his culture has “devolved,” and says that he “understands” the reasoning behind politicians and their gun bans.

Would the New York Times have published anything else?  The comments are amusing if not downright ridiculous.  He is a great writer!  He has started a commonsense conversation among gun nuts and the rest of the world.  It’s a “moving and beautifully written article.”  Who needs a gun that can “spray bullets with one pull of the trigger?”  “Concealed carry is a bad idea unless you have a job that requires it.”  And this from Dara Resnik.

Thank you, David Joy, for this thoughtful piece. I wonder how many more are like you, and how we can bring them into the open. I think many of them are afraid of what you experienced when you brought up the subject of banning assault weapons to your friend — it’s taboo in gun culture to talk about curbing any gun rights at all. But I know you are not alone in your views.

I imagine given who your friends are, there will be, to use a firearm term, some kick back for having published this piece. But writing it was the right thing to do.

I hate to break it to you Dara, but most of us don’t feel this way.  We call guys like David a “Fudd.”  You can look it up, dear.  And this from Peter.

People on the other side of the divide are fearful of all those paranoid gun-toters hoping that they’re not in someone’s line of fire when things go bad, with reason or without. How have we as a society arrived at this point

I’m more worried about the cops, Peter.  And yes, “we as a society” have arrived at this point.  At one time, kids carried their guns to school with them.  No, I’m not kidding.  So point your finger of blame somewhere else.

As for the author, David Joy, he’s apparently now fulfilled his bona fides for selling more books, as well as commenting on NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC.

What he hasn’t done is crafted a commentary that’s anything but a running list of anecdotes and his feelings about them, appended by a statement of agreement with gun bans.  And he hasn’t offered any compelling reason to believe that the justification for owning weapons – self defense and the amelioration of tyranny – has changed since the beginning of time.

Paul Waldman at The Week.

We are a nation divided, as everyone knows. And what we need to fix that problem is to reach out, express some empathy, and show our opponents that we don’t hate them even if we disagree.

Or at least, that’s what liberals are supposed to do.

You can hear that argument everywhere on the subject of guns: Whatever policy changes liberals might be proposing, it’s important to communicate to gun owners that you respect their culture and you don’t mean to wage an assault on their way of life. When someone like retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens writes an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment, it only convinces people that you’re a bunch of gun-grabbers.

I’m all for respecting other people’s cultures and taking their feelings into account. But when was the last time you heard someone implore conservatives to respect the culture of coastal or urban-dwelling liberals?

We’re told that if you grew up around guns, then you’re right to worry that your culture could be eroded, and we need to understand and sympathize with your perspective. But here’s something that might surprise you: For millions of Americans, not having guns around is an important cultural value. It’s part of how we define the kind of places we’d like to live. Since most Americans don’t own guns, maybe that’s worthy of respect and consideration, too.

We never seem to hear that — both sides of the gun issue may have opinions, but only one side is supposed to have a “culture.” But it’s important to understand that “gun culture” is a relatively recent invention.

Make no mistake, in the past a greater proportion of Americans owned guns than do today. As recently as 1977, half of American households had guns, according to the General Social Survey; by 2016 that number was down to 32 percent. But back when a far greater portion of the American public lived in rural areas and small towns than do today, there wasn’t really anything like today’s “gun culture.” If you had a hunting rifle or a shotgun your dad gave you, as millions of Americans did, you weren’t participating in an encompassing “culture” in which guns defined your identity. That gun was a tool, like a broom or a shovel or a cleaver.

But the gun culture of today, with so much fetishizaton of guns and an entire political/commercial industry working hard to spread and solidify the idea that guns are not just a thing you own but who you are, is what we’re now expected to show respect for. For instance, the idea that anyone should be able to own military-style rifles designed to kill as many human beings in as short a period as possible, for no real reason other than the fact that some people think they’re cool, is supposed to be a part of people’s culture, no matter how ludicrous it would have seemed to your grandparents.

And when you say something is part of your culture, you’re placing it beyond reasoned judgment. Its status as a component of culture infuses it with value that can’t be argued against. I don’t tell you that your religious rituals are silly, because they have deep meaning for those within that culture. Your ethnic group’s traditional music may not be pleasing to my ears, but I’m not going to argue that it sucks and you ought to start listening to real music, defined as whatever I happen to like. The food your parents taught you to make from the old country might not be to my taste, but I’ll appreciate it (at least once or twice) as a window into another aspect of our rich human tapestry.

In other words, when you place something in the sphere of culture, you automatically afford it a kind of conditional immunity from criticism. And you can demand that it be respected.

Nobody understands this better than gun advocates, who have been working to change the culture around guns, and our expectations about them, for some time. With only the most minimal restrictions on who can buy guns and what kind, their focus in recent years has been on putting guns in the hands of as many people as possible in as many places as possible. State laws have been passed to allow guns in government buildings, churches, schools, restaurants, even bars. They encourage people to get concealed carry licenses and to open carry whenever possible, to inculcate everyone with the idea that we should just expect to see guns wherever we go — until their culture becomes your reality, whether you like it or not.

Oh my God.  You’re not going to cry, are you Paul?  Based on the tone of this commentary, I think you’re going to cry.  You don’t want to hold hands in a circle and sing Kumbaya, do you Paul?  Because I don’t think I can take that.

Listen Paul and others like Paul.  We’re educated enough to know that the war of independence was catalyzed over gun control.  We also know that guns were not only ubiquitous in colonial America, they were highly valued and used for all manner of things, including self defense and the amelioration of tyranny.

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

When the British government began to increase its military presence in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, Massachusetts responded by calling upon its citizens to arm themselves in defense. One colonial newspaper argued that it was impossible to complain that this act was illegal since they were “British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights” while another argued that this “is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defense”. The newspaper cited Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England, which had listed the “having and using arms for self preservation and defense” among the “absolute rights of individuals.” The colonists felt they had an absolute right at common law to own firearms.

The culture you’re talking about, where you want safety and cradle to grave security from the state is the one that’s new, not mine.  Furthermore, I feel absolutely no brotherhood with you or your kind at all.  In the defense of kin and kith, you can have your state because I won’t be there to help you.  You can sleep in the bed of your choice.

You have a right to the culture you seek, but what you don’t have a right to do is enforce yours on me or mine.  And that’s what it would take, Paul.  We’re through talking.  There is no discussion on this that can make me change my mind, there is no compromise.

When you ascribe the differences to “culture,” I don’t think you understand that it’s a comprehensive world and life view that separates us, not merely culture.  You can respect mine or not.  I really don’t care either way.  The bottom line here for you is that the gulf that separates us is far wider and deeper and more problematic than you can imagine, and will never be bridged.  We will never come to agreement over these things, any more than we will about whether the state has the right to confiscate our wealth and redistribute it, force us to buy products or services, or force us to believe in certain things and behave in certain ways.

Your best solution is for some sort of amicable separation of the two of us, some peaceful departure that lets us live the way we choose and lets you worship the state.  Would you go for a solution like that?  I’m betting not, because the fundamental rule of controllers is that you want to control the lives of others no matter the cost.

Burlington Free Press:

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to show that the magazines were not high-capacity.

MONTPELIER – Gun rights activists gave out free rifle magazines Saturday in Montpelier as Gov. Phil Scott is poised to sign gun-control proposals into law.

“17 senators didn’t want to hear anything about unenforceable laws like the mag ban,” Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, said on Saturday.

Bradley introduced Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, one of 13 legislators who voted on Friday against a package of gun restrictions that passed in the Senate. Saturday’s rally on the steps of the Statehouse was a protest against restrictions on gun ownership and a lawsuit fundraiser as 2nd Amendment advocates vowed to take the fight to the court system if Scott signs the bill into law.

Last week 2,500 students and gun control advocates rallied in support of restrictions, following two weeks of school walkouts.

Benning, who was in Montpelier for another meeting last Saturday, witnessed the student rally. He took a conciliatory tone as he addressed several thousand gun rights activists.

“You guys are as passionate as the other side was,” Benning said. “I know you are going to find this difficult to believe, but some of those folks on the other side are really scared of you.”

Safety, Benning said, was the uniter, though each group had different methods of achieving that goal. Benning urged both sides to talk to each other and not yell at each other, while promising that the fight for gun rights had just begun.

“Lets use this as the beginning of the discussion not the end,” Benning said, referring to the November election.

After several more speakers Rob Curtis of Williston, the executive editor of Recoil Magazine, a “lifestyle magazine” based in Los Angeles according to its website, began handing out the promised 1,200 30-round polymer magazines that can be used for AR-15 and M4 weapons. The double line of receivers stretched out and down State Street.

The FedEx delivery tracking information shared in Recoil press statement showed a 12 package delivery of approximately 400 pounds was delivered to a residence in Williston on Saturday morning. The magazines are worth between $10 and $20 at online retailers. Curtis said that MAGPUL, a manufacturer and retailer based in Wyoming, helped organized the “Green mountain Airlift” to get ahead of the proposed restrictions.

Vermonters can keep magazines already in circulation, according to the bill.

The action was also a fundraiser with the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs taking donations high on the steps of the Capitol. Down the stairs, Keith Stern was collecting signatures for a run for governor while a few kids frolicked in the sun and collected packets of magazine with their families.

“My kids have been to the range and they know how to shoot,” Andy Roberts said standing with her son Ethan and husband Phillip. Ethan clutched his magazine and shyly admitted he was not yet a hunter.

There’s a little more at the link.  I left the correction in there because I thought it was amusing.  So I have to say several things if no one else does.

That doesn’t look like a crowd of several thousand to me.  Even if the photo was a bad one to represent all the people there, several thousand is an insignificant number of people considering what’s at stake.  Truthfully, I’m not sure if it happened in my own state we could get more than several thousand at the state capital to protest or rally.  Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but I’ve never seen a worse group of people to protect and fight over their rights than gun owners.  They’d rather send a few dollars, compromise and get back to [whatever they do].

Next up, I have to say about the rally-goers, you missed the boat when they interviewed you.  You didn’t supply the right optics, you didn’t communicate your message very well.  I see a sea of orange and the final meaningful statement in the article had to do with a hunter who had a boy who didn’t know if he was a hunter yet.

Folks, this has nothing to do with hunting.  Nothing.  It has nothing to do with sportsman’s clubs, or hunting weapons or gear, or turning over a hunting legacy to your children.  You don’t need a Pmag to hunt.  In fact, you can turn your bolt action rifles in at a state-controlled armory and check them out prior to each hunting trip and turn over a legacy of hunting to your boys.

What you can’t turn over by doing that is a legacy of liberty and freedom.  Governor Scott says he’s changed completely on gun issues.

Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, promised that universal background checks would reach the Senate floor by the end of next week for an “up or down vote.”

Scott sent a wide-ranging memo to lawmakers asking them for immediate and long-term actions that he said would bolster school safety and keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.

Read Gov. Scott’s full memo here.

[ … ]

The Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, a gun-rights group affiliated with the National Rifle Association, prefers the extreme risk protection order bill but has requested some changes. 

“I don’t think we’ll oppose it. In fact, as best we can, we agree with it,” said Chris Bradley, the organization’s president. Bradley added that he was concerned that the bill could morph into an omnibus proposal that’s “absolutely intolerable” for his group.

Scott said he was not interested in banning the sale of certain types of guns, but would consider restrictions on high-capacity magazines. He also called for a state ban on “bump stocks.”

He said that arming teachers, as suggested by President Donald Trump, was not a viable solution to violence. 

“There are other steps we can take that are more achievable and create a safer atmosphere,” Scott said.

With the Fudds already retreating before the first salvo is fired, I’m not sure I would have shown up at the “rally” either.  The very folks picking up Pmags are part of the “Sportsmen’s Clubs” who are supporting the infringements along with the NRA.

How sad all of this is.  So go ahead and wear your orange, boys, and teach your children how to shoot.  Pick up those Pmags as a token of what was once a free country.  But take careful note.  You are a poor substitute and replacement for the inspiration for magazine handouts and smuggling, Mike Vanderboegh.

Greenville News:

Although federal law prohibits convicted felons from possessing guns, local and state law enforcement officers as a rule don’t work to enforce federal laws, lawmakers say. State law bans only those convicted of violent crimes from possessing guns.

The bill prompted questions by Sen. Brad Hutto, an Orangeburg Democrat, starting with why a 36-year-old who was convicted at age 22 of breach of trust with fraudulent intent for embezzlement shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun.

“They’ve done their time,” Hutto said. “They’re fully off probation. Now they’re gainfully employed. They’re married. They’re a deacon in their church. Why are we going to reach back to those people that I would think have just as much right to defend themselves in their own house?”

Hembree said it is already federal law that the embezzler cannot own a firearm.

“But the federal government doesn’t come to my house every day, but the local constabulary might,” Hutto replied.

Hembree said the real solution is to fix the state’s expungement law instead of making the state law on guns different. Expungement is a court order that removes something from a person’s criminal record if that person meets certain conditions.

“You’re not fixing it by having a different state law,” Hembree said. “You’re fixing it by expungement, because if you fix it through expungement, then it’s not a federal violation. That’s the right way to fix it.”

Hutto said another problem with the bill is that if a spouse of a felon owns a gun, the spouse would have to remove it from the house. He believes most households in the state have guns for self-protection.

Hutto also said he wanted to be sure divorcing couples couldn’t use the law to remove each other’s firearms if a judge as a precaution placed a restraining order on both. He said in the heat of emotions, judges sometimes issue such orders to keep relative peace, while there is no evidence in many such cases of any threat of physical harm.

Good points sir.  I agree with every single one of them.  Now, tell me why you’re still ignoring the issue of open carry in South Carolina, and why you’re still like New York and California when it comes to how a man decides to carry his firearm?

What right by God do you have to make a man who openly carries his firearm a felon?  How can you defend an embezzler and call an open carrier a criminal?

David Codrea:

That said, and since it looks like the fix is in, it may also be fair to wonder what good it will do to comment on this latest iteration of the proposed rule on “rate-enhancing devices.” There are several reasons to go ahead and submit a comment in spite of such misgivings, not the least of which is it’s the right thing to do.

Well, maybe it is.  I just know that I’ve read the response to the comments submitted on the proposal to propose a rule (some of them were mine), and they may as well have bent over and crapped on the constitution and everyone who made comments about what it said.

It’s an amazing thing to see a group of people so okay with being so hated, detestable and disgusting.  I encourage my own readers to make comments even though the fix is indeed in.  Post them here.  If I make comments again, I won’t be as nice as I was the first time around.