Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Yeah. That’s the headline. This is the source.

A deal made by congressional leaders to avert a partial shutdown of the U.S. government includes an attempt to ease some veterans’ access to gun ownership, even when they are deemed “mentally incompetent” to handle their own finances.

The $436 billion funding package agreed on by congressional lawmakers Wednesday extended the deadline for the expiration of funding for government agencies—including the military and Department of Veteran Affairs—from March 1 to March 8. It was the fourth extension painstakingly agreed on by a divided Congress during this fiscal year, but it spelled optimism that a deal for the long-term budget plan could be reached later this year.

Among the victories touted by Republicans in this deal is a bill that would eliminate the decades-old ban on gun ownership for veterans deemed unfit to possess a firearm—a measure gun-rights advocates have long protested.

Gun Owners of America, a nonprofit lobbying organization that promotes gun rights, wrote about the elimination of the ban on X, formerly Twitter.

“Congressional deal cuts funding to the ATF,” the organization said, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “and eliminates a 20+ year old gun ban for veterans. It also temporarily reauthorizes the archaic Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988.”

By law, the Department of Veterans Affairs can report the names of veterans deemed mentally incompetent to handle their VA funds to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System—which is used for criminal background checks during the purchase of firearms—without a judge’s order.

According to this database, a veteran found mentally incompetent under VA regulations and assigned a fiduciary to take care of their finances can be banned from buying a gun, as the veteran is considered a danger to themselves or others.

BREAKING: Congressional deal cuts funding to the ATF and eliminates a 20+ year old gun ban for veterans. It also temporarily reauthorizes the archaic Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988.

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) March 4, 2024

You know who gets swept up in this net? Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, who have assigned financial responsibility to their mother, father or spouse, for the time they are deployed. They do this for the simple reason that they are in no position to do the books, challenge false charges, and all the things that go with having fiduciary responsibilities.

That’s right. Innocent servicemen get swept into this net of “danger to themselves or others” because they had an “fiduciary to take care of their finances.”

If you were a serviceman, the FedGov hates you. I know that’s hard to hear, but it’s the truth. They would sooner see you disarmed than anyone else on the planet. Again, I’m sorry, but this is truth-telling at its most raw.

Don’t trust them. Never talk about assigning someone over your finances. Never talk to them about PTSD or emotional problems stemming from anything, including combat.

Never trust the FedGov.

And for the second time in two days, good for the GOA for taking a principled stand.

Source.

Gun Owners Of America came out swinging against Senator John Cornyn, R-TX, after he entered the race to succeed Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Aidan Johnston, Gun Owners Of America’s (GOA) Federal Affairs Director, said tCornyn has failed to stand firm on conservative values and has instead, compromised with Democrats on gun control bills.

“Every time gun control gains steam in Congress, Senator John Cornyn is right there working with Democrats on a ‘compromise.’ That isn’t conservative leadership, it’s capitulation!,” Johnston said.

The GOA said that Sen. Cornyn’s record on gun rights makes him “wholly unfit” to become the Senate minority leader.

“In the eyes of gun owners and all those who treasure our liberties, the traitor from Texas’ record makes him wholly unfit to lead Republicans in the Senate,” Johnston said.

The conservative gun rights group said Cornyn has helped pass a series of bills that are “gross infringements” on the Second Amendment.

The GOA pointed to Cornyn over the Safer Communities Act, which he cosponsored with Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy in 2022.

The bill incentivizes states to pass extreme risk protection laws, also called “red flag” laws, that allow members of the public and law enforcement to petition the courts for a civil order to temporarily suspend a person’s access to firearms for fear that person might do violence.

Well, yes, of course he’s wholly unfit to do anything attached to any sort of responsibility, much less lead the senate. He’s a communist.

I’m glad GOA has spoken out against Cornyn. Someone has to. Where is the NRA in this? Oh, did they give Cornyn a “report card?” What does it say? No, don’t tell me. I’m not interested.

John Cornyn is a traitor. Tell everyone you know.

Source.

New Jersey officials on Wednesday released a long-awaited report on gun “microstamping” technology that would make it easier for police to solve gun crimes, an “important step” toward making every commercially sold weapon traceable, according to the state’s attorney general.

Just one problem: Nobody sells them.

New Jersey is now one of just a handful of states with laws concerning microstamping, a method using lasers to inscribe a unique code onto a gun’s firing pin, which then imprints the mark onto a bullet’s casing. Think of it like the VIN number etched all over your car.

Gun control advocates call it a game-changing technology, one that allows police to trace weapons even in cases where no gun is recovered. The gun industry maintains the technology isn’t up to snuff, and a federal court last year ruled against a California law mandating microstamping and other features in new guns.

New Jersey’s law, enacted in 2022, doesn’t mandate microstamping like similar laws in New York or California, instead offering rebates and incentives to pressure gun manufacturers to incorporate the technology. It also ordered the state attorney general to investigate the “technological viability of microstamping-enabled firearms.” That report was released Wednesday — more than a year after its statutory deadline.

The report details a live fire test conducted last summer at a State Police lab by New Jersey’s new microstamping examiner, retired ATF agent Reinaldo Roldan, concluding that the markings left on spent shell casings could be reliably matched to the gun. It was published by the attorney general’s Statewide Affirmative Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) office, which was created by legislation signed by Gov. Phil Murphy with the purpose of suing the gun industry over instances of gun violence under the state’s public nuisance laws.

“Now that we have certified that this technology is viable, we urge gun manufacturers to adopt microstamping technology in their production facilities and apply for placement on New Jersey’s microstamping-enabled firearms roster,” state Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement.

No, don’t think of it as a VIN number for a car. Think of it as a very stupid idea. Let me count the ways: (1) peening of the striker over time from discharging rounds, (2) filing of the number off the striker (and no one would ever be able to prove that it was from peening), (3) replacement strikers, and so on the story goes.

And no, no one sells them. And no one will. Ask Smith & Wesson how the customer base treated them after they agreed to put the internal lock on revolvers because of pressure from the Clintons?

This will go nowhere. No manufacturer will be interested in it. Again, the controllers have wasted a lot of money and time trying to control others. But you can’t stop the signal.

He makes a good case, but my question is why hasn’t the SCOTUS taken up one of the AWB cases yet? Are they still running from it like screaming little girls? That would be appropriate for Roberts and Barrett.

Regarding the bump stock ban, you have Trump to thank for that, along with the notion of making laws up by sitting in in the Oval office and telling the ATF what laws to make and the awful precedent that sets. Never forget that.

Source.

A bill introduced in the Louisiana House would ban state and local enforcement of federal gun control; past, present, and future. Passage into law would represent a major step toward ending federal acts that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms within the state.

Rep. Danny McCormick introduced House Bill 62 (HB62) on Feb. 6. Titled the Second Amendment Preservation Act, the legislation would prohibit the use of state personnel or resources for the enforcement of any federal gun control.

No public office, public officer, employee, or political subdivision of this state shall enforce or attempt to enforce, give or attempt to give material aid to, or participate in the enforcement of any federal acts, executive orders, administrative orders, rules, regulations, statutes, or ordinances regarding firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition against any law-abiding citizen.

“Law abiding citizen” is defined in the bill as “any person who is not otherwise precluded under state law from possessing a firearm and shall not be construed to include anyone who is not legally present in the United States or the state of Louisiana”

It also bars public offices and state employees from providing “material aid” for enforcement of the same. Material aid is defined as “any assistance that allows a person to make use of lodging, communications equipment or services, social media accounts, facilities, weapons, personnel, transportation, clothing, or other physical assets. This term shall not include the provision or allowance of the use of medicine or other materials necessary to treat physical injuries or assistance to aid the escape of a serious, present risk of life-threatening injury.”

This is a good move and should pass muster. However, it’s the easy part. The much harder part is passing legislation that uses local and state law enforcement to prevent enforcement of federal gun control laws by agents of the federal government.

Doubtless the supreme court wouldn’t like it, but hey, states and courts everywhere in America routinely ignore Bruen, Heller, McDonald and Caetano without anyone on the SCOTUS showing any interest whatsoever.

Yes, you heard that right, as stupid as it sounds. While I discussed the recent actions in the S.C. Senate, I didn’t read the amendments. But thankfully someone did.  NARG.

So basically with the amendments, the S.C. Senate passed a new bill that requires a permit to carry in any fashion, open or concealed, and tacked on some additional stuff. But that’s the situation now – open or concealed carry with a permit, or permission slip from the state.

This is legitimately wicked. They’ll go home and tell their constituency that they “did something,” and support the RKBA, knowing full well that they did nothing at all good.

Liars one and all, at least the ones who voted for it.

They listened to the LEOs, didn’t they? The LEOs don’t like you carrying without their approval and power to check you out to see if you have their approval. No they don’t. They’re not “special” then.

This is quite a backwards view of things by someone named Dominic Erdozain who apparently teaches at Emory School of Theology.

Tyranny is not too strong a word. Guns have begun to define the American experience, from small decisions about where you might travel to the massacres that haunt the news cycle like the visitations of a malevolent deity. Sold as freedom, they have created the very conditions that the liberal state was designed to prevent.

The singular idea behind the emergence of democracy was the protection of life from arbitrary power. What is liberty? wondered John Adams. Freedom from “wanton, cruel power”—from “imprisonments, whipping posts, gibbets, bastenadoes and racks.” Kings shed blood with little emotion, wrote Benjamin Rush, because they believed they governed by divine right. Republican governments spoke a different language. They taught the absurdity of the divine right of kings and asserted the sanctity of all life. This was not achieved through individual force but by collaboration and consent. In a democracy, power is diffused, and layers of restraint are placed between the restless will of the individual and the capacity to harm others. That was the “social contract.”

[ … ]

Unlike today’s gun advocates, who think of danger as other types of people, the founders understood tyranny as a universal propensity—a problem larger than monarchy or the more obvious villainies of history. The hard truth was that violence lurks in every heart, and “all men would be tyrants, if they could.” Such was the foundation of American constitutionalism and the elaborate checks and balances that defined it.

[ … ]

Everything in the American system—from bicameral legislatures to nervous protections against “standing armies”—reflected this shrewd and skeptical psychology. Power was dangerous and always looking to expand its franchise. The virtue of a representative, as opposed to a direct, democracy was that it was broken up, shared, and delegated.

This was the principle behind the well-regulated militia named in the Second Amendment. A militia placed “the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community,” not the burning will of the individual. The militia was to defense what trial by jury was to justice: safety in numbers. It was protection against anarchy, insurrection, and the “hand of private violence.” The notion that, in providing for a militia, the founders were also providing for that hand of violence reveals a profound misunderstanding of their philosophy. Gun laws, as we now know them, enable the very brutalities that the political process was designed to contain.

So you can read the rest of this silly, trivial missive for yourself if you want to. For the founders, who had just spent their fortunes and risked their own lives and the lives of their wives and children to take on a tyrant, and who used guns to do it, he turns the whole affair around to be fear of tyranny by the individual rather than the king. Only someone who graduated from Oxford and Cambridge with no history or understanding of the American system or cultural milieu could manage such a thing.

So let’s rehearse this one more time. The term well-regulated, in common parlance of the day, meant that the gun functioned correctly, the sights were set and zeroed at the appropriate distance, the machine ran “like a clock,” as it were, and the shooters knew how to shoot. It had nothing to do with words in the code of federal regulations, which didn’t exist then.

The very revolution to which he is referring was precipitated by British gun control. He needs to read David Kopel more carefully. He isn’t the scholar he things he is. Kopel is a scholar.

On the whole, his essay is such a mess that it would take a day of writing to fisk the errors. Suffice it to say that he needs to go back to the drawing board and answer this question: has he fully addressed the number of innocent men, women and children who were disarmed and then killed by their own governments in the 20th century? See also here. Stephen Halbrook has a higher number.

The answer might shock him. If it doesn’t and he is already aware of all of this, he’s advocating for the extermination of innocent people at the hands of wicked governments, and he knows it.

That’s the point of the second amendment – not disarming individuals. Finally, whatever theological excuses he has for his advocacy of gun control, I’ve answered all of them. If he wants to give me new ones, I’ll gladly answer those too.

We did open carry with a permit (if you recall, I listened to and reported on the entire floor debate in the S.C. senate that day). And I told you that we needed to embrace incrementalism. Now it’s time to do more.

A bill passed in the South Carolina Senate on Thursday would allow gun owners to carry their weapon in public without a concealed carry permit and would provide free firearms training.

The bill was approved by a 28-15 vote after nearly two weeks of debate surrounding concerns from some lawmakers and law enforcement officials over the open carry aspect. The addition of free firearms training is what led to a compromise and ultimately ended the debate.

The proposal now returns to the House, where representatives will need to agree to the Senate’s addition of the free firearms training, and other changes, in order for the bill to make it to Gov. Henry McMaster’s desk.

If signed into law, South Carolina will join 27 other states – including nearly every one in the Deep South – that allow open carry without a permit.

[ … ]

Law enforcement leaders have expressed worry over people carrying guns without training or experience, and the possibility of encountering armed people at a shooting scene and not being able to determine who is a threat and who is trying to help.

Oh, you know law enforcement is going to be against it. When it came attached to a permitting scheme, they didn’t want to waste their power because they knew it was going to pass.

Now, they’re inveighing against it.  I would suspect that SLED is especially against it, including that corrupt, awful head of SLED, Mark Keel, whom we’ve discussed at length.

Here is the source.

Of course, anyone with two brain cells can see this for what it is, i.e., an infringement on the RKBA.

Insurance never pays for intentional acts, nor especially for illegalities. They know this. It’s just another attempt at disarmament.

Ever wonder why the youth are turning away from the gun controllers and embracing the RKBA?  Well, for one thing, guns are fun.  Second, guns are good for all sorts of things, including personal defense. Then if that’s not enough, take a look at what the controllers look like.

They all look simply awful.  Glum, gloomy and depressing.  Take a look at that awful governor. She looks like she could spit nails that someone in her state other than her is in the spotlight on gun control. How would you like to be married to that battle ax?