WaPo.

NOGALES, Mexico — North of the border, the .50-caliber sniper rifle is the stuff of YouTube celebrity, shown blasting through engine blocks and concrete walls. Deployed with U.S. troops to foreign wars, it is among the most destructive weapons legally available in the United States.

But every week, those rifles are trafficked across the border to Mexico, where increasingly militarized drug cartels now command arsenals that rival the weaponry of the country’s security forces. In many cases, criminals outgun police.

[ … ]

“It’s irresponsible that in the United States this type of weapon is sold to anyone with minimum requirements and without any follow-up after the purchase,” said Fabián Medina, chief of staff to Mexico’s foreign minister. “What we know in Mexico is that it reaches the hands of criminal organizations, and that with these powerful weapons, they’ve shot down marine helicopters and deprived many people of their lives.”

“Follow-up after the purchase.”  Get what’s happening here?  Plans for the future?  And take note.  It isn’t the corrupt Mexican government that’s to blame, it isn’t the lack of community force protection due to gun control, but rather, U.S. “trafficking.”

But frustration on the Mexican side has grown. A decade after “Operation Fast and Furious,” in which U.S. agents allowed thousands of firearms to flow south in a botched attempt to track them, and despite $3 billion in U.S. aid to Mexico to fight narco-traffickers, the two countries have not curbed the flow of weapons.

Oh I see.  Another one of these “botched operations.”  The truth is more sordid, intentional weapons trafficking from the Obama/Biden administration via Holder, with an FFL being forced to cooperate, and then prosecution of that FFL to destroy his life.  All for the purpose of trying to tie the U.S. to weapons in Mexico and thus push for more gun control.  You mean that botched operation?

“Imagine if criminals were regularly shooting at American police with .50-cals,” Grillo said. “That would surely cause an uproar and people would look at how people are often able to buy these weapons as easily as if they are buying a pistol.”

So pistols are the problem.  No, wait.  AR-15s are the problem.  No, wait.  Bolt action Barrett .50s are the problem.

So this is how it’s going to be for the next four years.  Talking points handed to the CIA’s blog, WaPo, they go to print with the next scare story, and then suddenly the Fast and Furious operation is back in gear.  Or if not, soccer moms are terrified and demand more gun control.

The boogey man carries a Barrett, don’t you know.

Almost like brainless talking parrots saying what others have taught them to say, idiots in suits.

Sinclair's Soldiers in Trump's War on Media

This is Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy pic.twitter.com/2zGtrO46Ly

— ivan (@ivan8848) November 4, 2019

November 22, 1922, is the birthday of Eugene Stoner.  Readers know we say the name of Eugene Stoner only in hushed reverence here on these pages.  What better way to remember him than to listen directly to him, and listen to his friends weigh in.

Courtesy of BRVTVS.  She tells the story herself and supplies video.  There’s no reason for me to elaborate.

He doesn’t really give you a best (except to say that he still prefers bolt action), he surveys what’s out there.

Via reader Ned, who says a hunting cartridge can’t go in an ELR gun?  The trick is that it takes some time and expertise.

American Rifleman.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) released the 2020 edition of its Firearm Production Report to members this month, and among its findings is the fact that civilian interest and ownership of modern sporting rifles continues to skyrocket. Since 1990, according to the study, an estimated 19.8 million have been manufactured and put into circulation.

Forty-eight percent of all firearms produced in the United States or imported in 2018 were modern sporting rifles. Despite the manufacturing focus, inventories remained low across the nation, and this year’s firearm sales pace has left many retailers without models to sell.

There are approximately 79.2 million rifle magazines capable of holding 30 or more rounds in circulation—nearly all of them modern sporting rifle versions. The potentially lifesaving advantage of not having to reload during a criminal encounter isn’t overlooked by pistol owners, either. Roughly 71.2 million handgun magazines capable of holding more than 10 cartridges are owned by enthusiasts today.

Lots of luck trying to confiscate all of those guns.  That’s an impossible task.

However, there’s something that bears repeating, and it’s a point of second amendment logic brought up by David Codrea a couple of days ago.

And as few “gunpundits” seem to see, no matter how long you give them, “in common use” is not about popularity. It is about “every terrible implement of the soldier,” that is, “ordinary military equipment” capable of enabling citizens to prevail in “common defense” battles.  Were it otherwise, withholding new technology from We the People would be all tyrants would need to keep it forever out of “common use.”

Make sure to ponder the point he’s making, and focus on the last sentence of his paragraph.  If “common use” had to do with popularity contests, then the whole edifice of the second amendment collapses.

A tyrannical government could (illegally) keep them from being produced for or distributed to the public, and then claim in court (or the court of public opinion) that although our standing army has such weaponry, since they are not in common use among the public (from which the militia comes), the second amendment doesn’t apply to those weapons.

This becomes a “de facto” argument (which is a formal logical fallacy) by themselves nefariously ensuring the preconditions for waiving and cessation of the right.

Never forget what the founders really intended, regardless of the machinations of the lawyers – and ignore the dense gun bloggers who fail to point these things out.

The MSM is reporting that the recount in Georgia gives the state to Biden and calls him “president elect.”  Of course.

Meanwhile, this is Lin Wood on why none of this should matter.

So the question remains what is to be done with all of this?  The problematic thing for me is that Trump had four years to target the corrupt democratic cities, weed out the bad election software by the power of the DOJ, fire the deep state actors, and jail the deep state criminals.

He did none of that.  He spent his time tweeting.  So here we are, a banana republic with elections that mean nothing at all, a president who chose not to stop it, and a puppet of China getting ready to take office.