David Codrea:

“We have the avenue to attack both the machine gun ban and the NFA with the BATFE’s recent approval of a number of Form 1s,” Stamboulieh advised on his GoFundMe page. “I have a number of clients that I will be filing a lawsuit on behalf of to seek to overturn the ban and the NFA in different states.”

The Hughes Amendment is certainly an unconstitutional abomination, but in this case I have my doubts that any federal court will overturn it based on the weakness of D.C v. Heller.  That’s a shame for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the U.S. will fall behind the rest of the world in the development of automatic weapons technology.  Who makes the M249 SAW, and why is a foreign company the only one who can design an open bolt machine suitable for that purpose?

Kurt Hofmann:

As home manufacture of guns becomes more and more accessible to more and more people, “gun control” laws will become more and more irrelevant. A southern California radio station, KPCC, recently interviewed UCLA Constitutional law professor Adam Winkler, who has never been what anyone would call a staunch defender of private ownership of firearms. He doesn’t sound happy.

Kurt is all over the democratization of firearms ownership, this liberty being a positive sign.  For those of use who can afford it, fine precision-machined weapons made from the finest engineered alloys that we can hand down to our children’s children is the best bet.  But I look forward to future developments in home manufacturing.

Via Uncle, Joe Biden says we need another James Brady.  He just makes you shake your head, doesn’t he?

Mike Vanderboegh:

As the article notes, in the aftermath of the OKC bombing elements within the Clinton administration wanted to use the excuse to suppress the constitutional militia movement by measures that would have demanded — with all the force of the federal government backing it up — that we publish our memberships lists, required us to register as “paramilitary organizations” with the Feds and to get permission from them before doing any training.

On 6 Oct 1995, the Clinton political operative Dick Morris wrote in a memo to White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, as well as Deputy Chiefs of Staff Erskine Bowles and Harold Ickes:

“The public overwhelmingly supports a significant expansion in the FBI’s ability to investigate militia groups. If you and the Justice Department believe such an expansion would be in the public interest, I would recommend that we go ahead with it with a high profile announcement.”

Read the rest at Mike’s place.  There was significant disagreement over this strategy for reasons that Mike explains.  But what’s interesting to me is the actors (Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, Dick Morris, all of whom are collectivists) and what they were prepared to perpetrate.  The heart of the totalitarian is violence as an exclusive-use procedure, exclusively used to deal with perceived problems and exclusively in the hands of those in power.

David Codrea:

“That is nonsense,” he responded to the contention that arms are needed to defend freedom, revealing just where he stood (still stands?) on citizens resisting the tyranny he now warns against. “If the government wants to take your rights away or imprison you for whatever reason, your owning an assault rifle is not going to stop it.

Trying to take away my guns would be a very messy and ugly affair, and notice how Savage doesn’t say who exactly is going to do the taking.  Advocates of gun bans never consider that they advocate putting someone else in harm’s way.

Mike Vanderboegh has a long and interesting post on Ralph Peters’ book “Wars of Blood and Faith.”  Mike remarks:

Peters’ eye is focused on the world picture of 2007, not the American domestic reality as we experience it now after 7 years, most of them reflecting the neo-tyrannies of the Obama regime. Yet Peters’ description of the elites of both parties and of the permanent Mandarin bureaucracies that serve them is even more accurate today. And the disconnect between their collectivist ideologies /slash/ godless-religion and the deeply held beliefs of those of us who still revere the Founders, seek liberty, and worship the God of Abraham, Moses, David and the Christ could not be any more stark than that between us and the beheading savages of the Islamic State.

As I have observed before, we are a nation divided along the answer to the existential question, “Does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government?” This is a political question, yes. It is an intellectual question. It is a question of competing and mutually exclusive world views. It is thus also a moral question. It is a religious question. It is a question of blood and belief, to use Peters’ words.

I enjoyed Peters’ book and can always take away something from his interviews.  But I don’t always agree with him, and one specific black mark on his book is its tendency to lump all religious view into the same category.

But I too disagree with Peters and his diagnosis of the malady.  I must unfortunately wax philosophical for a moment and recommend that you read the first chapter of Gordon H. Clark’s “Religion, Reason and Revelation.”  Clark utterly demolishes all attempts to define religion by showing how those who would do so set out boundary conditions for the definition that reason in a circle (or assume the consequent).  It’s best to discuss these matters in terms of world view, or philosophical systems.  Christianity is a system, or world view, as much as Dewey’s instrumentalism, Mill’s utilitarianism, communism or any other ‘ism.  It just happens to be the truth, but that is beside the point.

The point is that communism is a faith as much as Christianity is a faith, and it is much of a world view as Christianity is a world view.  As far as Islam is concerned, it is a political faith more than anything else, and a totalitarian one at that.  There are many manifestations of evil, but the most prominent one in politics is totalitarianism.  Separating Islamists from communists isn’t a very useful or meaningful bifurcation, and I think Peters has missed the boat on this one.  Yesterday it was the communists, today it’s Islam, today and tomorrow it’s the contemporary manifestation of communism in America.  They are different faces of evil.  But “there is nothing new under the sun,” as the wise man said.

David Codrea:

After over three years of emotional torture and total economic destruction, the prosecution, representing the same Department of Justice that has stonewalled investigations into its own culpability for smuggling guns to Mexico, now demands extracting five more years out of the lives of Rick, Terri and Ryin Reese. What that prosecution has not done is explain where a government that gets its sole Constitutional instruction on arms under the proscription that “the right of the people to keep and bear [them] shall not be infringed” also finds its authority.

See the update on the Reece family and the lying under oath engaged by the Federal Government.  Sad and despicable.  When the very ones in authority will not obey the laws the Congress passes to govern them, why should we?  And this reminds me of a post Mike Vanderboegh made just recently on the role of the law in totalitarian governments.

Kurt Hoffman:

When millions of Americans, with neither the metalworking and gunsmithing skills to build firearms by hand, or the wealth to buy equipment sufficiently sophisticated (at the prices such equipment commanded until now) to do so through automation, can nevertheless produce effective fighting arms in the privacy of their homes, “universal background check” laws, “prohibited person” laws, “assault weapon” bans, etc. become meaningless. The gun ban zealots’ worst nightmare–uncontrollable, utterly anonymous access to so-called “assault weapons” is upon us, spelling the death of the “government monopoly on force” so beloved of the gun ban jihadis.

That’s a victory for humanity.

This will make it even easier to ameliorate any evil universal background check law passed by Congress.  Rock on.

Mike Vanderboegh passed on this piece on caliber debates again.  But this is a strange one.  Somebody apparently wants the FBI to begin using the .22LR cartridge.  As I said, strange.  I’ve always thought of the .22LR as underpowered, even for a varmint round.  Muzzle velocity and wound trek matter (I prefer the .22 WMR for varmint rounds), which is why the 5.56 mm (.223) is such an effective round and has served the U.S. military so well for years given its propensity to yaw, tumble and fragment into pieces leaving multiple would treks.  Related: here is a very interesting article at The Daily Caller on the history of the .357 magnum (a round which I like very much).  For the record, I shoot .45 ACP, .38 Special and .357 magnum in my handguns.

David Codrea:

“[Kennedy] said there should be a law that lets authorities punish skeptics and deniers — those who engage in ‘selling out the public trust,’” The Washington Times reported Tuesday, citing an interview the “progressive” activist gave to Climate Depot at the people’s Climate March in New York City. “I wish there were a law you could punish them with. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish these politicians under…

And while Kennedy maintains a police officer was lying when, as a teenager, he was accused of spitting ice cream in the officer’s face precipitating his arrest, he did not take the judge up on pleading not guilty, despite having the Kennedy fortune to mount a legal defense that would have allowed him to challenge the testimony. Likewise, his 1982 arrest for heroin possession resulted in probation, community service and an expunged record. Curious, that the man who would control those without addictive personalities is still described as a man who can’t – or won’t – control himself.

David goes on.  Really, read the rest of the hypocrisy here.  Kennedy is sounding crazier and crazier not only because he is an ideologically driven communist who likes being special and above everyone else, but also because he knows that AGW is a perishing science.  It is dying because there is no evidence for it.  There is no evidence for it because it’s a myth, a fairly tale of rich elitists who have nothing else to worry about.

Kurt Hofmann:

The proposal was put on the ballot by the same Republican-controlled Legislature that believes, in the absence of any evidence, that President Barack Obama is coming for your guns” … “The current state of affairs seems to reinforce Mr. Dotson’s position that the amendment’s wording was misleading. It surely didn’t tell voters that they’d be handing guns to felons, but that’s precisely what is happening right now” …

Read the rest of Kurt’s setup with St. Louis Police chief Sam Dotson and his opposition to the gun rights amendment which recently passed by a large majority.  It wouldn’t matter if the language really was unclear.  It wouldn’t matter if they really were giving guns to felons (although they aren’t).  It wouldn’t matter who dislikes the amendment.  It passed, and it passed overwhelmingly.  That closes the issues.  As far as Dotson is concerned, he can be replaced.  He sounds like an outdated dinosaur.

In other news, the Sandy Hook Commission calls for a crackdown on home schooling.  For any readers I have in Connecticut, seriously, is there any reason at all to stay there?  Think hard.  Why would anyone live there?

And this is one reason I am reluctant to ship firearms through the TSA and airline when I am flying.

Kurt Hofmann:

The Brady Campaign announced Tuesday that it is suing four online retailers of ammunition, firearm accessories, and body armor, for their ostensible culpability in the murder of 12, and injuries to scores of others, in the Aurora, Colorado theater massacre in 2012. Neither Lucky Gunner, Sportsman’s Guide, BulletProofBodyArmorHQ.com, nor BTP Arms pulled any triggers in this atrocity, of course, nor have they been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, and nor is there even any indication that any of them are or have been under investigation for any such crime.

Kurt further observes that “All four of the retailers are accused of wrongdoing for selling these items to an alleged user of illegal drugs–with exactly zero mention of how they were supposed to have been aware of that. Then again, we have seen before that the Brady Campaign believes that gun and ammunition dealers should be punished for their lack of psychic powers.”

Read the rest.  What the Brady campaign really wants is universal background checks as a prelude to confiscation.  The Brady bunch is patient and willing to acquiesce to smaller steps towards their bigger goal.  Fight them with all means necessary.

By the way, Mike Vanderboegh remarks in his post on this subject, “shoot any oddball calibers, that are unlikely to be found at any local shops?  You’re out of luck … and out of ammo.  And that is the whole idea.”  Already thought about it.  I looked in my safe the other day and saw .30 Carbine, 5.56 mm, .270, .40, .45, .38. .357 magnum, etc., and made the decision to divest myself of some of what I had.  I will focus on 5.56 mm, .308, .270, .45 and .38 / .357 magnum.  Not only am I concerned about oddball cartridges, I want to minimize my types and calibers.

David Codrea:

“Attorney General Eric Holder is again asking a federal court to delay the transfer of disputed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious to a House committee,” Politico reported Tuesday. “In a new court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to require Holder to turn over any of the roughly 64,000 pages of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until after her rulings can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”

That should come as no surprise to readers of this column. It is, in fact, the only reaction experienced observers of the administration, the attorney general, and the issue should have expected …

Read David’s whole piece here.  This is what happens when people without a moral compass rule others.  Right becomes whatever the powers want it to be, whatever keeps them in power. whatever pet projects they have at the time.  It’s Machiavellian.  What is lawless and immoral for us – the shipment of weapons to criminal cartels so that they can kill other people – is right for them because it advances the anti-gun agenda by justifying their claims that American gun shops are arming the cartels.

The plight of Christians.  “The kids were crying, and [my husband and I] were praying looking for a safe place along the way.”  My goodness, my poor, dear fellow believers.  Why didn’t you arm yourselves when you could, so that you could fight now?

David Codrea:

Rejecting calls for more federal gun laws by the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, a dozen rabbis have issued a joint statement rebuking the position of those groups, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership announced Monday in a member alert and press release.

Offering their statement “in support of Jewish law, Jewish life and Jewish self-defense,” the dissenting rabbis refuted justifications given by the religious groups for promoting disarmament edicts … “Jewish history supports self-defense,” the rabbis declared. “It is remarkable that the RCA and OU have ignored the long Jewish history of persecution.

Of course it does.  My Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense relies on Biblical law – including O.T. law – for the case for self defense.  Jews are like “Christians” (I use quotes), in that some folks who call themselves Christians are not (perhaps a lot of folks), and while being Jewish is an ethnic thing, believing Biblical law isn’t.  There are many Jews who would sell out their own people.  Jews they are not.  Remember, I’ve talked to one.

Mike Vanderboegh on the hidden hazards of MRAPs.  Yea, that’s not all.  Watch over time and see just how many police forces will give them back or let them rot and rust in the fields or parking lots, unable to pay the thousands of dollars to buy a new tire when one goes flat, or send them back for maintenance because no one around them knows how to work on them.  This is especially true given the unfunded liabilities America faces, helping along the process of telling police that their retirements are in jeopardy (like Memphis had to do), or telling the Miami-Dade police they may no longer have jobs.

Shreveport Times:

Many assume police officers are rigorously trained before being allowed to patrol the streets.

But drive through rural Louisiana and it’s possible to be stopped by a law enforcement officer who’s never experienced a day of police academy and instruction on use of force, stressful scenarios and physical fitness that comes with it. Sometimes, an eight-hour firearms training and on-the-job guidance is all an officer gets before starting work as a salaried, gun-toting, arrest-making officer.

Due to a permissive aspect of state law, a hodgepodge of different standards can crop up from one small agency to the next. It’s a pattern experts say puts police departments, and the public, at risk.

You mean that cops aren’t trained as much as I am, and as much as I pursue on a regular basis for requalification with my firearm?  Actually, I’m not so much convinced that the problem is with training.  The problem stems from seeing themselves as something other than peace officers who are servants of the people.

The U.S. Army is worried about too few black officers and thus is making plans to increase said minority in the officer corps.  And the diminution of the armed forces continues unabated.

Daily Mail:

Islamist police in Saudi Arabia have stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children, and confiscated their bibles, it has been reported.

The raid was the latest incident of a swingeing crackdown on religious minorities in Saudi Arabia by the country’s hard-line Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. 

The 28 Christians were said to be worshipping at the home of an Indian national in the eastern city of Khafji, when the police entered the building and took them into custody. They have not been seen or heard from since, raising concerns among human rights groups as to their whereabouts.

To all such Islamists: May God bring your plans to naught.  May your families revile you, may you lose your women and children, may you become sick and perish in ignominy.  Before you perish, may you watch as your country diminishes to ashes, may you see your belongings stolen from under your nose, may your children curse and strike you, and may your weeping be loud so that your countrymen can hear your lamentations.

And if you ever try that here, I will shoot your ass off and your intestines out of your stomach and leave your body for the vultures to consume, right after pouring swine innards over your open wounds.

David links a comment on his piece at Guns Magazine:

Sorry but like many have already said, you should know the laws of the states you travel through. Even as a sheriff’s officer when I go to another state on personal business I call ahead to the town I am going to and ask if there are any laws I need to know about, or if I should just leave my gun home. Pennsylvanians aren’t very smart to begin with, so I am not surprised by this story. I don’t think she should do time in jail, but a nice heavy fine would work. What the hell do you need hollow points for in the first place? You planning on shooting a cop through a vest?

First of all, personal defense ammunition doesn’t penetrate soft body armor (Kevlar).  Even FMJ or MC ammunition (ball ammo) doesn’t penetrate soft body armor unless it’s high velocity like 5.7 X 28.  Second, HR 218 allows sworn LEOs to carry weapons across state lines regardless of any other considerations (not that it should if our rights aren’t similarly recognized).  I doubt that the commenter is a LEO.  That would make the person a liar.

David Codrea:

How the gun owner community will react to the merger remains to be seen. At this writing, it does not appear those opposed to the acquisition are doing anything other than expressing strengthened resolve, while those intent on helping JPFO through the transition remain hopeful. Based on interest expressed in limited venues where the development is being discussed, it appears many are either unaware or else unconcerned.

So it’s a done deal.  You know my views on this.  I don’t have relationships with corporations.  I do with people.  I’ll wait until David and Kurt tell me their experiences with this arrangement.  I’m in a holding pattern and will continue to link those individuals to whom I’m committed.  I have no commitment to organizations.

More on the vulnerability of the electrical grid.  You do understand, don’t you, who was first to discuss the vulnerability of the larger step up transformers (nearly four years ago now), and who (Bob Owens) was first to discuss the vulnerability of the smaller, lower voltage infrastructure?  And we didn’t even get paid for it.

David Codrea:

New Jersey is going full bore to prosecute a lawbreaker arrested for possessing a handgun loaded with hollowpoint ammunition in violation of state law. Evidently this person is so dangerous that entry into a diversionary program is off the table, and instead, a mandatory minimum 3-year prison sentence will be imposed if a felony conviction is obtained, something that seems probable at this writing … How that will benefit the people of New Jersey is unclear.

It won’t benefit the people of New Jersey.  This poor woman is being prosecuted for the same reason that Sergeant Tahmooressi is left to rot in a Mexican prison by U.S. authorities.  The people of New Jersey don’t care any more about women trying to defend their loved ones than the authorities care about the U.S. Marines.  It’s all about guns, which in turn is all about control.

Via David, there is this from Virginia democrat Mike Dickenson:

Let us pray to god that he infects all members of the @nra with Ebola so they can meet a miserable end, as so many have at the hands of guns

This is an imprecatory prayer.  He’d better be careful.  I’ve prayed such things, once when the subject of my prayer soon contracted cancer and lost his job (Senator Arlen Specter).  But if your heart is dark or you don’t have the mind of God in such matters, you may bear the brunt of your prayers.

Kurt Hofmann:

Frum, MacGillis and Horwitz would have us believe that cops will continue to morph into storm troopers unless and until we the people submit to further forcible citizen disarmament laws, that we must choose between being “policed” by an army of enforcers indoctrinated to think of the people (the same people they used to claim to “protect and serve”) as enemies; or we must surrender those arms best suited to protection against those who would destroy or oppress us–including out-of-control police. That sounds rather a lot like extortion, and is also a false choice.

The collectivists want it to be a Hobson’s choice.  But since we aren’t part of the collective, we mustn’t make any choice at all, except to fulfill the duty to protect ourselves and our families (and tribes).

This picture from Mike Vanderboegh is worth much more than a thousand words.  I stared at the screen today looking at that picture for about ten minutes.  Burn it into your memory.  Don’t ever forget it.

In other news, Al Franken is a loathsome, awful man.

The following year, in 2005, the radio hosts Opie & Anthony played the interview before they welcomed Franken on their XM radio show. The old Franken explains his 2004 interview: “There were a couple guys, and one was smarter than the other,” he said. “There were actually two guys, I think they’re both Down Syndrome, and one actually made a lot of sense. . . . We stayed with each other . . . and then the other guy made no sense.” Prompted by his politically incorrect hosts, he laughs about the use of the term “genetic disaster” to refer to the mentally retarded.

May God give him his due recompense for his bigotry and hatred of the very ones whom God says to protect and love.  Shameful.

David Codrea:

An Ohio woman used her lawfully-carried handgun to prevent a pair of men armed with a baseball bat from abducting her, WBNS 10TV Columbus reported Friday. Per the account Dinah Burns of Lancaster gave to the police and to reporter Jeff Valin, producing her concealed handgun induced the men to stop approaching her and flee.

[ … ]

Not, as colleague Kurt Hofmann noted in a recent JPFO Alert, rights should be dependent on such number-crunching – but what is significant here is the antis always couch that argument by saying more people are killed with guns than kill their assailants with guns. Those who do are intentionally steering the conversation away from the relevant argument. That’s because, as this incident reflects, good people often resolve such situations with the mere presentation of a gun, without firing a shot.

Besides, statistics only matter when you consider yourself part of the collective and subsume your rights under the umbrella of whatever is best for the collective, decided, of course, by the rulers.  As for the woman, good for her, although I would have shot enough times to kill the would-be assailant.

Via Say Uncle, here is Hunter the no-hands shooter.

Here is his Facebook page, and more about him.  Okay, I promise never to complain about anything at the range ever again, except when someone muzzle flags me.

Apparently, British writers haven’t been beaten on enough (I am seeing a lot less of this among American writers).  Someone tell this writer that there is no such thing as a semi-automatic assault rifle.

The shirtless, homoerotic megalomaniac has boasted that he could take Kiev in two weeks.  Well, here’s a prediction short boy.  Try it.  I say that occupation and the resultant insurgency would be your worst nightmare.

David Codrea:

The group, which has not endorsed Republican challenger Tom Foley at this writing, understands he is a far cry from a perfect candidate on guns. The choice they face is to decide which of their two options available to them — allowing a committed gun-banner to re-secure political power without significant opposition, or sending a message to anti-gun politicians that there is a price for undermining rights by supporting a moderate — is preferable.

This is the question we all face in so many upcoming elections, isn’t it?  I’m not a single issue voter, but if I look first to a candidate’s position on guns, I’m generally able to find out in short order whether they are progressive or constitutional.  Whatever else one might think, Connecticut is a rough place to be if you believe in the constitution.

Kurt Hofmann:

John Lott, Gary Kleck, and others are noted researchers, vastly more knowledgeable about statistical analysis than I will ever be, and have sold a great many books trying to provide that proof, or at least compelling evidence–and frankly, I don’t really care.

I don’t care because fundamental human rights–and the right to self-defense must be seen by any rational, ethical person as chief among those–cannot legitimately be held hostage to a requirement for a favorable statistical outcome.

Good for Kurt.  Statistical outcomes.  It’s the same way the collectivists argue when they tell you facts and figures about how it is more likely that you’ll commit suicide than ever use a gun in self defense.  First of all, I doubt those “facts,” and second, I don’t care what the collective does with weapons.  I’m not the collective.

From Matt Bracken.  All they’ve done is provide me with a target-rich environment.  Double tap — double tap — double tap — etc., reload, repeat.