CNBC:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told CNN on Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on gun control on March 26.

The influential committee chairman said the panel will discuss “red flag” laws, passed in many U.S. states, that allow courts to take away firearms from suspected dangerous individuals after receiving warnings from police officers or family members.

Red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection, enjoy bipartisan support and have been praised by the White House and the National Rifle Association.

Graham, who has become a close ally of the president, said he and Trump had discussed the matter. He noted that there was “a lot of common ground” on aspects of the proposal.

[ … ]

A month later, Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced red flag legislation that ultimately never went anywhere.

So you see several important things here.  Lindsey V.2 isn’t so much really Version 2, but Lindsey V.1 with some makeup.  He talks big, but then when push comes to shove, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.  Graham supports red flag laws.

Second, Graham has spoken to Trump, and apparently Trump is favorable, which we essentially already knew from his “take the guns first” comment.

Third, a republican senate is convening hearings on new gun control legislation.  I repeat, a republican senate.  And in two short years, in Trump’s closing arguments for your vote for presidency, he’ll say that he stands in the way of the bad people taking your guns and will never let your second amendment rights be infringed.

News from New Mexico:

ALBUQUERQUE – A bill to expand background checks on private gun sales in New Mexico that’s awaiting the governor’s promised signature is presenting a key question for law enforcement as it heads for her desk: How do they expect to enforce it?

Debate over the bill exposed a rift in the state over gun rights before it won final approval in the Legislature this week and was sent to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has described it as common-sense reform.

A large majority of sheriffs has vowed not to enforce the law, arguing it burdens lawful gun owners and will be difficult to enforce. That’s because a gun most likely would have to be used in a crime before law enforcement could investigate whether it had been purchased unlawfully, according to the bill’s opponents.

But others, including Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, say the measure will provide a public safety tool. For example, he said officers could follow up on complaints that felons or others restricted from owning firearms are obtaining them.

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said the measure offers deputies the ability to ask gun owners they encounter how they obtained a gun, just as they are now able to ask motorists if they are licensed to drive. It also offers private gun dealers increased opportunity to determine that they are not selling to a felon.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask them to do this one thing,” she said.

The bill is the first of a handful of proposed gun reforms this year to clear the Legislature, despite outcry from dozens of sheriffs and others that the law may infringe on state residents’ gun rights.

In an interview, University of New Mexico law professor Joshua Kastenberg said the law is “constitutionally sound,” but that he sees both those for and against the measure having compelling arguments.

“It’s more a political policy debate,” he said.

[ … ]

Cibola County Sheriff Tony Mace said he believes the bill violates his constituents’ rights.

As president of the New Mexico Sheriff’s Association, he organized a push for the county law enforcement officials to present draft resolutions to their commissioners declaring their jurisdictions Second Amendment sanctuaries. He said 26 out of 33 New Mexico counties have approved the resolutions.

New Mexico elected officials generally take oaths pledging to uphold both constitutions, as well as state laws.

What else would you expect a law professor to say?  There are two things here, the first being whether it should pass constitutional muster (it shouldn’t) and the second is whether it will as determined by the black robed tyrants who sit on the bench.  The answer is that it will, of course.

“Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said the measure offers deputies the ability to ask gun owners they encounter how they obtained a gun …”  Answer: It’s none of your damn business.  Or better yet, “I’m being represented by my lawyer so you’ll have to pose the question to him.”  Don’t ever talk to the police, and don’t answer any such question.

Unless it’s a “Terry Stop” it’s unconstitutional, and if the stop is legitimate, don’t answer his questions.

As we watch the proliferation of gun control laws in America both at the national and state levels, you can expect to see more of this sort of thing, where local and state representatives, law enforcement officers and other authorities hand-wring over what to do with such unenforceable laws and regulations.  You can expect them to worry more about the danger to cops of trying to enforce things like this, and you can expect more cops and lawyers to fabricate all kinds of myths about what those laws allow them to do.

You can expect a requested swelling and bloating of the police state, but with unfunded liabilities approaching 300 trillion dollars, no money or personnel will be forthcoming.  And finally, you can expect more lies from the controllers about how this is a “common sense” proposal that will aid public safety.

Houston Chronicle:

If you have noticed more feral hogs in your Houston-area neighborhood recently, you are not alone. Neighbors across the Greater Houston report the wild animals are more frequently making their way into their subdivisions and streets, leaving properties destroyed in their wake.

The Houston area is not unfamiliar with the battle between feral hogs and residents; last year the Chronicle reported hogs were disrupting neighbors in Liberty and San Jacinto counties; taking over  Spring, Tomball and Cypress areas and driving neighbors in the Woodlands insane. 

The hog epidemic is a problem particularly in Texas; the state’s estimated feral hog populations are in excess of 1.5 million, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

In 2017, feral hogs created an estimated economic toll exceeding $1.5 billion in the U.S. In Texas, it is estimated they cause $52 million in agricultural damages every year, according to the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute.

Steven Horelica, co-owner of Deep South Trapping, a Texas-based hog trapping business, said the Houston area has seen a significant increase in feral hog sightings. He has trapped pigs all over suburban areas in Houston, including Kingwood, Missouri City, Cypress and Liberty.

Over the last few years, the number of hogs he has trapped has increased significantly, from 742 in all of 2016 to 1387 in 2018. So far in 2019, he has already caught 306 hogs.

“Instead of being out in rural agricultural land, they are starting to move into subdivisions and cities,” Horelica said.  “It is starting to affect everybody, not just farmers or ranchers.”

The biggest negative impact these animals have is the destruction they cause to property due to their feeding habits, Horelica said. The pigs use their snouts to root up ground in search of insects or food.

” They can tear up a golf course or a park or someone’s yard that has been well maintained and watered and… in one night they can destroy acres and acres of property and cropland,” Horelica said.

Catching hogs.  Catching them.  To do what, release them later?  Pretty soon they’ll be hiring super-duper SWAT cops to run around Houston suburbs with bolt action sniper rifles to kill them because no one can be trusted with a gun except cops.  Lethal removal.  But still not enough.

In order to keep up with the rapid propagating hog population in the South, everyone with a gun would have to be shooting hogs day and night.  But they don’t want to do that, so instead, feral hogs will chase and gore little children, threaten adults, destroy crops, make back yards nasty with feces and cause massive health problems, and cause more erosion than can be imagined in a horror movie.

As reader and commenter The Alaskan says:

Lethal control works. Alaska uses aerial wolf control to manage wolf populations as well as long term hunting and trapping seasons with generous bag limits. Wolves will have dramatic impacts on moose and caribou populations if allowed to increase in numbers unchecked. Natives in western Alaska will tell you that there was never any moose in western Alaska until wolf suppression was initiated. Moose in Alaska have been expanding their range because of wolf (lethal) control. State Fish and Wildlife personnel use aircraft to control wolf populations. Abundant moose and caribou populations are the result.

Your pig problems could be managed the same way. Aerial lethal suppression coupled with an open hunting season on pigs until you achieve the numbers, in terms of managed populations, that you want.

If eradication is your goal, then lethal removal is the only option. If the State is serious, your pig problem can be solved.

Remember, countless millions of bison, packs of wolves, plains grizzles and the prairie chickens (extinct,) were removed from the great plains with single shot front-stuffers (in large part.)

The scoped AR seems IMO, to be the best platform for ground based pig control. What fun!

Lethal control works, but only if that tactic is actually used – enough.

Via reader Mike:

The leader of the state’s largest police department on Friday denounced the new “constitutional carry” law as a step in the wrong direction.

“Saying that it makes communities safer, that’s (a) pretty tired and old statement, as far as I’m concerned,” said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty. “That’s not the case. We should be going the other direction and be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country.”

You jackass.  Assume that everyone is carrying a gun and act appropriately and respectfully.

But I agree.  We should be more responsible about who we have carrying guns in this country.  Most LEOs, it appears to me, aren’t responsible.  Let me know when you’ve disarmed your cops and we can all feel a little safer.

News from down under:

There are calls for a national target to reduce Australia’s suicide rate as new statistics show 3,128 Australians took their own life in 2017.

This represents 262 more deaths than the previous year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released national data on Wednesday that showed intentional self-harm is now ranked the 13th leading cause of death, moving up from 15th position in 2016.

Australia’s suicide rate is now at 12.6 deaths per 100,000 people. This is equal to 2015 as the highest recorded rate in the past 10 years.

The counselling service Lifeline has urged the Morrison government to set a national target to achieve a 25% suicide reduction over five years.

Ah yes, it’s another government problem in need of another government solution.  Why don’t you blow up the nanny government and that may give people some reason to live again?

Say, how’s that gun control thing working out?

News from Washington:

Sheriffs in Okanogan County have arrested a man accused of posting Facebook death threats directed at Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich and other Washington state Sheriffs after they announced their opposing of Inititative-1639.

Late Wednesday morning, a search warrant was served at the residence of 23-year-old Jaydin Ledford.

The investigation began on Feb. 4 after death threats surfaced from a Facebook account, stating that “Ozzie Knezovich is gonna get a bullet in his skull” or “Sheriffs that are non compliant will be shot. by me.”

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force along with Omak Police and Okanogan County Sheriff’s Detectives.

Law enforcement took these threats very seriously and agencies were notified to be cautious of Ledford, particularly if they were to need to respond to a call for service involving him or in the area of his residence.

Police learned early in the investigation that Ledford lived in Omak, Wash. Ledford was taken into custody without incident and was held in Okanogan County Jail prior to being transferred to FBI custody. The FBI and JTTF continue to investigate the threats.

This is a failure of schooling, but mainly of parenting.  His father, if he had one in the home, should have taken him out back and beat the shit out of him way before now, and taken his smart phone and shoved it up his ass.

When I was young, my father had me out mowing a 3.5 acre yard with a push mower in the middle of the summers in the South and raking all of the clippings, and before the age of weed eaters, I had to pull all of the grass growing near the sides of the house by hand.  I had to help him plant vegetables, and although the hose reached, he wanted me to haul water to the garden by bucket.

Older, I baled hay, dug ditches, trained quarter horses, cleared horse trails, picked horse stalls, fed horses, bussed tables, cleaned dishes, bagged groceries, ran tractors and dump trucks, worked on automobiles, cut wood with chain saws, built fencing with posts and barbed wire by using a tamp for the posts and stretcher for the wire, and on and on the sorry list goes.  If you didn’t do those sorts of things, you missed being taught to be a man.

This boy should have been out doing things like that instead of reading Karl Marx or whatever he was doing.

MEF:

Last year, Christians were persecuted more than ever before in the modern era — and this year is expected to be worse: “4,136 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons,” according to Open Doors USA in its recently published World Watch List 2019 (WWL) of the top 50 nations where Christians are persecuted. “On average, that’s 11 Christians killed every day for their faith.” Additionally, “2,625 Christians were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned” in 2018, and “1,266 churches or Christian buildings were attacked.”

Whereas 215 million Christians faced persecution in 2018, 245 million will suffer in 2019, according to Open Doors — a 14% increase, that represents 30 million more people abused for their faith. This means that “1 in 9 Christians experience high levels of persecution worldwide” (note: all quotations in this article are from the WWL 2019).

[ … ]

Last year’s WWL provided more specific numbers: “At least six women every day are raped, sexually harassed or forced into marriage to a Muslim man under the threat of death for their Christian faith…”

And you can count on it coming to our shores.  It may be at the hands of Muslims, or it may be at the hands of socialists who want us to worship the state.  While waiters or waitresses might wait respectfully in the wings while you pray over your food with family at restaurants today, praying might be a catalyst for Muslim gangs to target you after your meal in a new years.  My youngest son has been to Iraq.  Ask him how Muslims view Christians.

If you’re a Christian, do away with that silly, childish notion that Jesus was a long haired Bohemian, peacenik, pacifist, flower child hippie.

Buy guns.  Be prepared to use them.

Outdoor Life:

After more than a century of flattening the world’s biggest, meanest, and tastiest game animals, the .30/06 Springfield remains an incredibly well balanced, versatile, affordable hunting cartridge. With modern ammo it shoots 100- to 200 fps faster than it used to. If it was good enough to stop lions, rhinos, buffalo, and elephants 100 years ago, it’s probably good enough to stop deer, elk, and moose today.

He makes his case with unction when comparing the ballistics to 6.5 Creedmoor, .270 Winchester, and other cartridges.  The 300 Win Mag comes out on top in just about every category which is expected, but just by a little.

But when comparing ballistics, he looks at energy (ft-lb), and hydrostatic shock is important as well, so I’m not entirely convinced.

My conclusion is that the cartridges are closer than one might think, but one interesting thing is that the 270 Winchester beats the 6.5 Creedmoor in carried velocity at distance, energy, and bullet drop.

While he says makes the case for the .30-06, I might conclude that he really makes a better case for the .270 Winchester.

ZBROJNICE.com:

Portugal has the most restrictive gun laws in all of Europe, apart from the UK. But in several aspects, Portuguese weapons law is more severe and extremely perverse because it has a lot of dubious subjective prohibitions. Therefore, our law is – by far – the worst I know in any democratic country. I believe it violates Constitutional Rights and the basic structure of our legal system that is constructed around the principles of the Portuguese Republic Constitution.

The Portuguese legal regime regarding weapons had a radical change in 2006. Before that, the law was based on a 1949 enactment. This underwent some minor changes in 1975 and later more significant changes in 1997, 1998 and 2001. Although quite old, it was a well constructed legal regime in terms of objectivity, technical definitions, and very well balanced when it comes to rights vs. prohibitions.

In 2003 the Government created a special committee. It’s alleged aim was to simplify legislation regarding firearms and weapons. Then in 2006 they proposed what became known as the new weapons and ammunitions legal regime “Regime Jurídico das Armas e suas Munições”, generally called as “RJAM”.

This new package of laws was a total fiasco, being significantly more complicated than the previous law. It included two major enactments – the base law No. 5/2006 and the sport/gun collection law No. 42/2006. Plus several decrees, dispatches, regulations and a vast multitude of lesser legislative acts.

Just the Act No. 5/2006 alone is more complicated and larger than all the laws that existed until 2006 combined. When gathered together with all the other new legislative acts, things became even more complicated and difficult to understand.

All these problems were aggravated because this new regime was, and still is, based in “legal definitions” and “legal classifications” that have several technical mistakes and are so ambiguous that they can be interpreted in various ways.

Meanwhile powerful anti-gun lobby was seeking further restrictions. And they succeeded. The base law No. 5/2006 underwent a major revision by Act No. 17/2009. Five more amendments followed ending with Act No. 50/2013 that has been the last major change in force until today. Now we are facing further changes in connection with the EU Gun Ban.

Was there any kind of grandfathering for the newly banned items?

No. If you buy a gun in a perfectly legal way and you own it because the law in that moment guaranties that it is legal, there is nothing that protects you, nor your property, if the next day the law changes and the guns you legally bought and own becomes forbidden. You can’t keep it anymore, and if you do, you will commit a criminal offense that is severally punished.

Changes of the original Act No. 5/2006 always lead to a more restrictive regime. Many items that were legal by 2006 became illegal and are now considered “forbidden weapons”…

And there is no end to that.

The EU Gun Ban implementation proposal now exceeds everything we have seen so far in terms of absurd prohibitions, abuse of power, disregard for private property and increase of subjective and dubious prohibitions. It is now being discussed by the Portuguese Parliament.

[ … ]

It also introduced new prohibitions, and changed in a more complex way some legal definitions, all ammunition with expansive bullets became strictly prohibited except the ones used in hunting. A specific example: the prohibition of rifles and shotguns that resemble “war weapons”. Due to that change, several legally owned firearms had to be reclassified from “C class” to “A class” and could not be used any longer.

Those firearms owners had to apply for a different permit that restricted them firearms to what we call “house detention”. That means the owner cannot have any round of ammunition that could fit those guns and the guns must be kept inside a vault or a safe house. Never being able to be used for any purpose than the simple possession inside that specific house, locked in a vault and without ammunition.

Vítor Teixeira’s repeating rifle Sako TRG 42. After 2011 change in Portuguese gun laws, this rifle (according to the opinion of the Portuguese Security Police (PSP) experts) could be classified as a “war weapon”, so Vitor chose to sell it off before the law was approved. Later, some of these where indeed confiscated by the police, but other (this is due to the subjectivity of the law) became – again – class C rifles.

Do read the entire interview.  That Sako is a very nice gun, and between the scope and gun he’s probably got $6000+ wrapped up in that weapon.  It’s now a paperweight because he (or its new owner) has no ammunition – or at least, we are to assume that he doesn’t.

The conflicting, confusing nature of the definitions and the various and sundry ways in which the regulations can be interpreted isn’t a bug – it’s a feature of all good gun control legislation.  The piecemeal erosion of rights is emblematic of what’s happening in the U.S. as we watch.  He said that the most recent gun control regime makes even more weapons illegal, and “there is no end to that.”

No, there never is.  And the Fudds who didn’t care about bump stocks may one day see their bolt action deer rifles locked in gun safes with no ammunition, unable to kill deer, because it’s considered by the controllers to be a weapon of war.

I’ve warned before about classifying guns as weapons of war versus hunting guns, or any other such bifurcation.  The U.S. Marine Corps used shotguns to clear rooms in Now Zad, Afghanistan.  They also used Winchester Model 70s in the initial stages of OIF as sniper rifles.  It didn’t bother them at all that Carlos Hathcock chose that very weapon in Vietnam (before its manufacture was outsourced to Japan, of course).

9mm Glocks, .45 ACP 1911s, bolt action rifles, high quality optics, night vision, knives, shotguns, body armor, and good comms gear are all still in use in the military and always will be (in some form or another).  The controllers think all of that is either a weapon of war or appurtenant to it.

Incremental cooperation with the controllers means gradual loss of liberty.  Compromise is for men who have no principles.  The only mistake the expert made in the responses was in his assertion that anything that is a God-given right can be “very well balanced when it comes to rights vs. prohibitions.”  That’s where all the problems began.

The controllers want to own that purview of mankind precisely because it is domain God has retained to Himself.  The state has set itself up as god, and there is no compromise good enough when the only acceptable sacrifice is absolute fealty.

Elizabeth MacBride:

Shaggy beards are to South Carolina gun shops what man-buns are to Vermont coffee shops. And both places are modern-day town squares, but in different Americas.

[ … ]

As an aside, enjoying the shock value of his statement, he tells me that it’s legal to buy and sell small tanks in South Carolina, too.

Shades of Fort Sumter, I think. If it’s man-buns versus shaggy beards, does the side with the WWI-era tanks win?

I’m not sure what she’s insinuating from the way that question was posed, but she may be too clever by half.

Listen, Ms. MacBride.  The little boys with man-buns don’t want anything to do with those boys with shaggy beards down in South Carolina.

They hunt feral hogs with long knives by jumping on their backs and stabbing them in the gut.  They stay out all night ‘Coon hunting, only to go to work the next day after they’ve had to chase their dogs down.  They can put a 30-06 round on a dime at 100 yards.  They drink corn liquor from a fruit jar, grow their own vegetables, and the man-buns wouldn’t last two seconds with them.

If you know any man-buns thinking of coming down this way, tell them to go buy a frapa-mocha-super-duper-grande and chill for a couple of minutes until they get some sense.