Demand:

Show me the study that proves arming citizens makes them safer. I’ll wait. In the meantime, why don’t you vote for the red flag laws that are being debated today. When the fatalities decline you get to look like a hero. #GunReformNow

Dude.  We don’t have guns in order to make you or anyone else “safer.”  We have guns for the amelioration of tyranny.

Counterdemand:

Show me a study that demonstrates you or anyone else will be successful in disarming us?  I’ll wait.  In the mean time, mind your own damn business, jerk.

Via TCJ Western correspondent Ned Weatherby, this sad, sorry tale.

Newly released body camera footage shows Las Vegas police officers pausing for several minutes in the hallway of the Mandalay Bay hotel — as mass shooter Stephen Paddock guns down 58 people on the floor directly above them.

“Holy sh-t that’s rapid fire,” officer Cordell Hendrex utters in the chilling video, reacting to Paddock’s gunfire — which he later described as “like thunder all around and above us,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The officer and his first-day trainee, Elif Varsin, stayed on the 31st floor for four-and-a-half minutes, even as they heard the shooter’s position reported as “the 32nd floor, room 135.”

“I’m inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor,” Hendrex says in the video. “I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us.”

In a report, he later wrote that he “froze right there in the middle of the hall” after being terrified.

Eh, whether it’s a column or patrol car in Florida or hotel floor in Las Vegas, I’m just glad the cops had something to hide behind and that they went home safely at the end of their shift.  Officer safety first, of course.

And if things like this don’t dissuade you from the belief that the cops are there to protect and defend you, then you believe in fairy tales, myths and children’s story books.

Via TCJ Eastern correspondent Fred Tippens, this bear was pissed.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) – A bear was spotted Wednesday afternoon walking around the parking lot at an East Knoxville Cracker Barrel.

Restaurant staff said the bear was spotted in the Cracker Barrel parking lot off of Millertown Pike near Knoxville Center Mall. They said the bear got startled by people getting out of their cars and began jumping on parked vehicles and scratching them, damaging several.

Mckensi Burchell, from Blaine, was at Cracker Barrel when an employee told them to look outside.

“As soon as we looked out the window, the bear was on a 4Runner, then it jumped on top of my car and dented the whole top in,” Burchell said. “What are the chances of this happening?”

Pretty high, I think.  Carry guns, boys.

And speaking of bears, Dean Weingarten at Ammoland has a really interesting article up where he mostly lifts citations out of prior exchanges between a bear expert and park rangers on the best way to defend against big-boy bears.  Spray or guns.

You be the judge.  I’ll carry a gun with me.  The moral of the story is the 3-second rule.  Be prepared, be practiced and be perceptive.

Jacob Sullum at Reason:

Ten years ago this week, the Supreme Court for the first time explicitly recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to armed self-defense. Since then the Court has revisited the subject only twice, while it has heard about 45 cases involving the Fourth Amendment and about 60 involving the First.

That stark disparity reflects a failure noted by critics on and off the Court. After waiting more than two centuries to acknowledge that the Second Amendment imposes limits on legislation, the Court has passed up dozens of opportunities to clarify the extent of those limits, leaving the task to lower courts that are often hostile to gun rights.

District of Columbia v. Heller, decided on June 26, 2008, overturned a handgun ban in the nation’s capital, finding it inconsistent with the Second Amendment right to use firearms for self-defense. Two years later, the Court overturned a similar law in Chicago, confirming that the Second Amendment constrains states and cities as well as the federal government.

Aside from those two landmark decisions, the Court has enforced the Second Amendment in just one case. In 2016 it ruled that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had flouted Heller when it upheld that state’s ban on stun guns based on the mistaken premise that the Second Amendment applies only to militarily useful weapons that were in common use when it was enacted.

That is far from the only time a court has reached a conclusion that seems inconsistent with what the Court has said about the Second Amendment. “Most federal judges have not accepted Heller,” Alan Gura, the lawyer who argued the case, recently told Tom Gresham on the radio show Gun Talk. “They have taken the posture of ‘go ahead and make me do it.'”

Well, there are two things at work here.  First, regular readers know that I consider the Heller decision to be weak.  Scalia did an awful job with it focusing on self defense, when we know full well that isn’t the framework in which the second amendment should be interpreted.

The conversation would clarify a great deal (and get off of the “well regulated” part) if it focuses on the overthrow of tyranny rather than self defense.  Then “well regulated” can be seen in the proper context, i.e., well regulated and calibrated firearms which the shooters knew how to use.

Scalia left an opening as wide as my truck for the controllers to drive through.  Furthermore, his statement that their ruling doesn’t amend the obviously necessary rules for prohibitions in certain sensitive locations (my wording) doesn’t help in the least.

Then there is the issue of recalcitrant judges who don’t care about the constitution or God-given rights.  McDonald was a “make-me-do-it” case, just as other such cases following have been.  And no one has made them do it yet.  It’s still impossible to get a concealed handgun permit in Hawaii, New York or New Jersey.

For these recalcitrant judges, the best solution is for them to be treated as the traitors they are.

TheAlaskan:

“Those who want your arms are planning on keeping theirs. Simple as that. To willingly disarm is to leave the field and forfeit the fight. The only “Authority” is God Almighty and He and history are on our side. The ferocity of righteousness will smite the minions of Satan, I just know it.”

Ammoland:

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) have announced that their extensive, 923-page opposition comment was filed with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regarding the agency’s proposed rulemaking to ban “bump-stock” devices. The FPC Comment and its 35 exhibits can be viewed online in their entirety at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/fpc-fpf-opposition-atf-bump-stock-ban.

The FPC Comment in opposition was filed on the groups’ behalf by attorneys Joshua Prince and Adam Kraut of Firearms Industry Consulting Group (FICG) after President Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to use executive actions to unlawfully and unconstitutionally expand the scope of statutes to force the dispossession and destruction of legally-acquired property–without just compensation–and subject possibly more than 500,000 Americans to severe federal criminal penalties.

Here is a summary of the arguments.

• ATF’s Proposed Rulemaking (docket no. 2017R-22) is procedurally flawed and violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)
• ATF’s proposed rule violates the Constitution in numerous ways, including:
  • I – Separation of Powers
  • I – Ex Post Facto Clause
  • Fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms protected under the Second Amendment
  • Rights to due process, fair notice, and just compensation for the taking of property protected under the Fifth Amendment
• ATF’s proposed rule exceeds its statutory authority
• ATF’s proposed rule is arbitrary and capricious
• ATF’s proposed rule is unconstitutionally vague
• ATF failed to consider viable and precedential alternatives
• ATF’s proposed rule is not supported by policy considerations
• ATF’s proposed rule “should be withdrawn and summarily discarded, or, in the alternative, ATF should elect Alternative 1 and abandon the proposed rulemaking in its entirety.”

I really appreciate the hard work these men put into attempting to stop really bad regulation that has potential far-reaching consequences in the future.

I have not had a chance to read all or even much of what’s there.  Suffice it to say that the ATF is legally required to read and respond, even if their responses are stolid and doltish.

I’d also like to reiterate that I’ve made my own comments, and James Wesley Rawles has made a large number of very astute comments.  I’ve also followed up my initial comments with the following queries.

1. Note for the record any and all registered professional engineers employed and/or contracted and remunerated by the ATF or DOJ, whose job it was to provide input, calculations, analysis or opinions on the technical issues pertaining to this rulemaking.  Provide those analyses for our review, and list the PEs by name, license number and state.  State laws for all fifty states require that such analyses be traceable and sealed or stamped by the PE.  If no PEs have reviewed the technical issues pertaining to this rulemaking, say so with specificity and clarity.
2. Note for the record any and all licensed professional gunsmiths employed and/or contracted and remunerated by the ATF or DOJ, whose job it was to provide input, analysis or opinions on the technical issues pertaining to this rulemaking.  Provide those analyses for our review, and list the gunsmiths by name, license number and state.  If no gunsmiths have reviewed the technical issues pertaining to this rulemaking, say so with specificity and clarity.

With all due respect to the lawyers who have worked hard on this, and the mechanics and fabricators who are far better than I am, the machinists who can do things I can’t, and the backyard engineers out there who can rig things I’ve never thought of, I request – no, I demand – that these last two questions be answered officially and in the public record.

A lawyer isn’t an engineer.  A mechanic isn’t an engineer.  A machinist isn’t an engineer – I mean by that a registered professional engineer who is licensed in one or more states.  An engineering license connotes legal liability and financial and fiduciary responsibility, to the point of lose of business and personal possessions and even bankruptcy.  Not even a professor of engineering holding multiple PhDs impresses me in the least.  A PhD isn’t a PE (professional engineering) license.

I demand to know what registered professional engineers were involved in the determination(s) made by the ATF regarding this rule change, their names, states registered, and license numbers.  I retain the right to litigate the lack of technical review and accountability and seek damages to gun owners by all available means, as well as seek censure of the PEs involved in this process.

Following up this post, this video documents the legal response to the Miami Beach Police Department thus far.  The LEO point that they are allowed to point weapons at armed men even if armed legally (for the purpose of officer safety) is idiotic beyond belief.

If that’s true, they should go around pointing weapons at everyone since anyone could be concealing a firearm.  At any rate, this point of logic will be lost on LEOs since .. well, just because.

Via reader JoeFour, this link is an veritable encyclopedia of knowledge of the 1911.  I intend to print it out, read it, and keep it handy.  In the mean time, it would be nice if readers would peruse the contents and lift the important things out for us here, or merely the interesting things to you for commentary and discussion.

Via WRSA.  Bad things.  That’s what.

Before the 1945 Soviet occupation of Romania, the people had the right to own guns. I remember my father telling me his dad owned a double barreled shotgun he used to hunt rabbits with as well as a Luger picked from the retreating German troops (German soldiers were getting rid of all their military equipment by simply throwing it out of the troop transport trains).

When the communists took power in 1949 following falsified elections, the first law they enacted was total gun  confiscation (for the greater good of course).Then after they made sure the population was disarmed they started the arrests, imprisonments, reeducation camps and killings.  So practically since 1949 it was illegal to own any firearms in communist Romania.

Then there is this very important observation.  Listen carefully dear men.

After so many years of restrictions and servitude for over two generations, the perception of the Romanian population about gun rights changed in worse; I must admit when I first came to the US I too was surprised to see how owning guns is something normal and affordable and I too believed guns in the hands of untrained people can be dangerous (and keep in mind I served 2 years in the military so I was familiar with firearms).

After so many years of war and occupation the overwhelming majority of the people were sick and tired of the war so they believed what the propaganda of the new regime was telling them. They were lied that the government will protect them, that guns must be surrendered for their own safety, that since the war is over there is no need for guns anymore.

I’ve made the same observation before, albeit thankfully without first hand knowledge.

Every single one of the genocides in the twentieth century – every … single … one – from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot to Idi Amin to the Turkish Ottoman Muslim extermination of the Armenian Christians, was preceded by gun confiscations.

Nothing good ever comes from surrendering your firearms.  The founders knew that and gave us the 2nd amendment – if we can keep it.  And again, make careful note that reeducation and propagandizing is all part of the larger strategy for subduing the American culture to the wishes of the controllers.

The Gun Writer:

While traditional open carry is generally banned, Florida law allows the open carry of handguns while hunting or fishing.

To be clear, you can wear an exposed handgun in a holster if you’re fishing — period. It’s completely legal.

There are a few other exceptions.

This fishing exception was apparently unknown by Miami Beach police officers Sunday morning.

The results were almost tragic.

Thank God no one was killed or seriously injured.

Details are still emerging, but here’s what we know for sure:

A group of fishermen — who were lawfully open-carrying handguns — was fishing off of the South Pointe Pier in Miami Beach Sunday morning at around 10:40, when they were confronted by Miami Beach police officers.

At some point during the confrontation, a Miami Beach police officer pointed his gun at the group. At least one man was unlawfully detained and his weapon was confiscated.

Police injured one man’s shoulder when they took him to the ground. He was later transported to a hospital.

So now do you want to hear how the MSM reported this event?  Hold on to your breeches boys.

Six armed people who were fishing Sunday morning at the South Pointe Pier in Miami Beach were detained by police and then released.

The anglers, whose guns were openly displayed on their hips, cited a state law that allows people to carry a firearm while fishing, hunting, camping or attending a gun show, said Miami Beach Police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez.

Park rangers spotted the group about 10 a.m. Sunday and summoned police. The anglers were questioned by police but allowed to stay after mentioning the state law, Rodriguez said.

“Out of an abundance of caution we have assigned two officers to the pier while they remain,” he said. “We are encouraging visitors to use other portions of South Pointe Park.”

It all sounds so peaceful and well-intentioned, yes?  So here is a question for you.  Abundance of what caution?  Exactly what did the police think they were protecting?

Let’s pose a question. “Why officer, you don’t want us to see a weapon on the carriers, but carrying concealed is acceptable, then exactly what are you doing by recommending we stay away from these men?  They could be carrying anyway and it be legal, it’s just that we wouldn’t know about it?”

They would only have one answer.  “We don’t want you to see peaceable men openly carrying weapons because you may figure out that there is no difference between open and concealed carry except that you don’t know it if someone has concealed their weapons.  Then you may demand that these men be allowed to do that everywhere, or at least not oppose open carry, and we can’t have the peasants with the same rights we have, can we?”

But the MSM reporter doesn’t go there, because like all MSM reporters, she got her talking points from the cops.  The MSM is an organ of the state.  It always has been, it always will be.

One final thing.  Let’s stipulate that the cops were poorly bred, uneducated imbeciles for a moment (that’s usually a good approximation for cops).  The first thing out of my mouth if I had responded to this event as a cop would have been this.  “Hey boys, how’s the fishing?  Catching anything today?  Let’s talk about what you’re doing here, sirs.”

Unholstering a weapon and pointing it at someone who is peaceable and innocent is the most idiotic, irresponsible, dangerous and thoughtless thing a person can do.  The cops truly are morons of the highest order.