Kurt Hofmann:

That means, of course, that there is no vitriol too foul, to his way of thinking, to fling at groups like Open Carry Texas, for their campaign of openly carrying rifles and shotguns into places like restaurants and retail stores (although he may not have made the comparison between such activists and child rapist/murderers–yet). Of rather greater concern than the vitriol, though, is Malloy’s stated intention to try to get open carry activists shot and killed. Ah–another “non-violence” advocate.

It’s yet another installment on the logical inconsistency of the gun control movement, like claims that guns don’t save lives or that they create more danger than they abate – which they cannot truly believe because they never advocate taking guns away from the police.

David Codrea:

It’s part of a long-standing and not particularly successful attempt by the “progressives” to chill dissent by making gun owners fear to speak out lest they be tarred with the brush of extremist. Perversely, those who want them to feel that way have been known to come up with extremist advocacy positions like ‘Isn’t it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill?”

David and Mike have already been painted with that brush.  So have I.  Care to join the club?  And speaking of extremist, Mike explains just what he really believes.

It is for this reason that the collectivists — the domestic enemies of the Founders’ Republic — are made somewhat angered, if not deranged, by the Gadsden flag. Its sentiment is plain — it cannot be polluted or corrupted or co-opted. They must therefore do their best to demonize it, to discredit it, to profane it, and to lie about those who fly it. We have seen that very clearly in their reaction to the Miller meth-head murderers’ misuse of the Gadsden flag in their Nevada rampage. The flag is itself “anti-government” they proclaim and proof that the Millers represent the rest of us “anti-government types.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not “anti-government,” although the Southern Poverty Law Center has been calling me that for two decades now. I am in fact pro-government of the kind the Founders would recognize. I am pro small government, safe government — a government of limited powers — a government that supports the rule of law AND OPERATES WITHIN IT.

It’s important to distinguish between advocates of constitutional government and anarchy, the brush our opponents would choose for us.

And finally, Mike asks the question, has the Department of Homeland Security become America’s standing army?  Yes.  Next question.

David Codrea:

I see some people don’t like it. Well gosh. Others don’t like my writing for Examiner because they refuse to learn how to navigate the internet with a reliable and easy to activate pop-up blocker. Still others don’t like my other outlet of gun magazines, because they’re perceived as beholden to their advertisers. I notice no one is providing alternative options. Most never even share my GRE links.

Well, I certainly do.  Many people hate me.  I have never let it bother me.  Go by and congratulate David on the new gig at CheaperThanDirt.  I criticize the NRA almost with out ceasing, but I’m still a member.  Listen, folks.  If you wait to find an organization that agrees fully with every one of your views, you’ve found yourself.  Not even your spouse agrees with you 100% of the time (perhaps not even 50%).  It’s similar to church attendance or membership.  You have to learn to get along and accept it when you disagree with folks, or you’ll be alone.  I have criticized Smith & Wesson repeatedly on their refusal to stop the supply of firearms to California LEOs in light of the most recent gun laws.  I am still unhappy with the response.  Yet my most recent gun purchase (no more than two weeks ago) was a S&W.  You know, because they make good stuff.  We all have to get along, I’ll just pull the plug if, say, S&W begins to flirt with gun control, for example, or compromises with the evil masters in the White House.

Mike Vanderboegh:

A new bartering economy has emerged with ammunition rather than dollar bills as the currency.

I’m buying as much as I can, as quickly as I can.  Time.  We need more time.

Kurt Hofmann:

But wait a second. Who would these people be? Technically, of course, that depends on what one judges to be “just unbelievable damage,” but if he is concerned about guns in the hands of people who can do such damage, rather than those who will do it, then he just announced that his “biggest frustration” is his inability to disarm just about everyone.

Never, ever get into a logical debate with Kurt.  And as for what Obama meant, he isn’t as good a lawyer as Kurt.  He wouldn’t for example, disarm SWAT teams (even those who shoot innocent people) because he is a collectivist.  Obama’s communication problem is that he says too little and says too much.  We all know what he really thinks.

Mike Vanderboegh:

Chicago Police and ATF Form Intelligence Center To Fight “Three Percenters”

Right.  Like the three percenters are the problem in Chicago as opposed to say, the gangs and black-on-black violence.  I’ll tell you what.  Drop by, you Chicago police officer (“Dr. Suess”) who argued with me over e-mail about how I was going to beg for your help one day to “protect me,” and tell me who commits crime in Chicago?  And tell me why you aren’t out running down the gangs, you coward?  This is all a ruse, a smokescreen to send money to Chicago, the home of criminal Eric Holder.

David Codrea:

True to form and right on cue, “progressive” pundits who feed themselves pushing citizen disarmament and other ways of subverting true egalitarian power sharing are out in force, blaming everyone outside their collectivist echo chamber for the actions of two misfit killers.

Of course they do.  And be sure to read David’s rundown of the couple’s ejection from the Bundy Ranch.  As for the “pundit,” he doesn’t bother me a bit.  Only people who don’t believe in anything need the government to tell them what to think.

Kurt Hofmann:

Sunday evening, Nia Sanchez went from being Miss Nevada to accepting the crown for Miss USA … Ms. Sanchez, who has a fourth degree black belt in taekwondo, recommended that women learn how to defend themselves.

You mean someone has been named to this position who didn’t give the answers common to a sophomore in international studies at Dartmouth or American University?

I see that Eric Cantor has lost.  It isn’t just his treason concerning immigration and amnesty that concerned the people of Virginia.  Remember is gun control schemes.  Gun owners never forget.  Never.  And watch out, Paul Ryan.  You guys are two peas in a pod.  And perhaps you will suffer the same fate one day.

David Codrea:

As I asked many years back, during the reign of another president who rivaled our current one in his fear and despising of an armed citizenry, has not despotism and mass destruction plagued every civilization that preceded ours? Is it not, in fact, still commonplace throughout the globe? By what suspension of reality, by what denial of the observable and the probable, by what art, device or magic are we sheltered few immune from catastrophe? Are we certain, from our brief and privileged vantage point, that such things will ever remain headline curiosities? Is it not just plain stupid to proclaim that our familiar way of life will forever be the norm, when everything that has gone before us shows we are, instead, the extremely lucky beneficiaries of a rare and fortunate convergence of circumstances; and one, by the way, that has only been preserved under force of arms?

This is poetic prose worthy of the best authors.  And while I don’t believe in luck, I agree with David (who is speaking tongue in cheek here).  “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  The heart of man is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).  And that’s why we should expect totalitarianism.  Because it’s the state to which evil man aspires.

Kurt Hofmann:

There cannot fail to be consequences from the discovery on the part of every parent in America that the government’s hired muscle can kick down their doors, set their children on fire, and the official response will be a shrug, and maybe an “oops.”

Inevitably, some parents will refuse to tolerate the intolerable. Some, even knowing the vanishingly small likelihood of their own survival, will fight back with every weapon they possess. Private citizens defending their homes and families will doubtless do the bulk of the dying, but they will not do all of it.

The Posse Comitatus Act is a vital law, but as the police themselves morph more and more aggressively into an occupying army, it is quickly losing relevance.

Kurt is saying what I’ve said before.  The militarization of police is a work-around of the law.  And don’t think for a minute that the founders would have any more approved of it than they did of the requirement to quarter troops.

Mike Vanderboegh:

So we know who this outdated move is pointed at, don’t we? And it has nothing to do with Jihadis, “homegrown” or otherwise. A cynic might say that given the Bergdahl swap and the unilateral disengagement from any pretense of fighting the Jihadis overseas that you are simply trying to assure full employment for armed federal bureaucrats, much as the repeal of Prohibition led to the transfer of Treasury agents to enforce the subsequent National Firearms Act. Dragon slayers need dragons to frighten the villagers into paying them for the privilege of full employment, no matter how obvious, ridiculous and hackneyed the lies are.

This is also poetic writing by Mike.  He is much more patient with his official letters than I seem to be able to pull off.  I just utter that “Holder is a servant of Satan” and leave it at that.  But you need to see just how Holder is a servant of Satan, and so visit Mike’s place and study his letter.

Via WRSA, Tyler Durden:

The masses are being plundered on a scale which is inconceivable and unmatched in history; it is the source of the middle classes dying in the developed world. The developed world has become a well-disguised plantation of serfs and slaves. They are given nothing to store and save their labor in as the currency they hold are printed endlessly and have no reserves to back them and are redeemable in NOTHING, contrary to every sound currency in history. Modern day money is nothing less than a wealth confiscation scheme run by morally and fiscally bankrupt central banks and governments against their own citizens.

And thus does God disapprove of it, and thus will it fail.  Be prepared.

David Codrea:

“You’ve got a friend,” the subject line of an email purportedly from singer James Taylor, but actually from info@barackobama.com, an email address for Organizing for Action (formerly Organizing for Obama) assures me.

“Really?” I wonder. Not only does OFA act as the online community organizer for “the most anti-gun president ever to occupy the Oval Office,” but James Taylor himself is on record advocating “We need to make some sacrifice[s] to our freedoms,” meaning enact citizen disarmament “in order to safeguard our children.”

This is all really too bad.  I like James Taylor’s music.  But what business does a musician have thinking that he is any better to judge on my freedoms than me?

Kurt Hofmann:

Apparently, in other words, he has edited the Second Amendment to state that, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed, except by a federal government that maintains a sound fiscal policy.”

He can’t help himself.  “Can a Leopard change its spots?”  I never thought I could trust the guy anyway.  Moreover, I want to know just how many people really believe the claptrap about Chris Christie potentially giving up his chance at a run at the Presidency if he signs the magazine ban in New Jersey (as if to say, “I had considered voting for you but now that you did this you lost my vote”).  Chris Christie is a gun grabber from way back.  Once a gun grabber, always a gun grabber.  It’s how most folks in the Northern states think.

Recall the toddler blown up by a grenade at the hands of the police?  You have to see the update from Mike Vanderboegh on this.  This Sheriff has history – ugly history.  There isn’t a single bit of difference between this law enforcement community and the lawless drug cartels.  None.

David Codrea:

A New York television station’s news programming has dropped all pretenses of unbiased reporting and relegated itself to being a purveyor of anti-gun propaganda.

“PIX11 is taking a stand against gun violence,” the station announced in a commercial promoting its involvement “teaming up with local leaders and the families of victims to make June gun violence awareness month.”

David invokes what the administration says about “authorized journalists.”  I think it’s a good thing when so-called journalists finally drop the pretense.  At least this is a bit of honesty about things we all knew.  And as for authorized journalists, that just goes to show that they think about the first amendment what they think about the second: some pigs are more equal than others.

Kurt Hofmann:

Speaking of their desire to disarm people, that of course serves their purpose in more than one way. Not only is citizen disarmament their desired end, it’s also a means to that end, because the more “gun free” zones, there are, the fewer people permitted the means to effective self-defense, and the more they can be limited in whatever firepower they are permitted to have, the less likely it is that the next killer will be stopped before he racks up a big, exploitable body count.

Hey.  To make an omelet a few eggs must be broken.  It’s the cost of doing the king’s business.

Mike Vanderboegh:

Game and fish belong to the king.

And what did commenter Josh say about the notion of New York SWAT teams culling deer in that sorry state? “Only the King’s men may hunt the King’s deer in the royal forest.”

David Codrea:

Misplacing blame for the killing of his son in the Isla Vista murders, the father of one of the victims issued a grief-stricken attack on the National Rifle Association Saturday … they clearly offer proof that no amount of “gun control,” for which California has been hailed as a leader by citizen disarmament groups, will ever be enough for them.

That’s why there can be no compromise with them.  And as for the NRA, it’s the same confusion that blames the NRA for our opposition to funding of gun “studies” by the CDC, or mandated “smart gun” technology.  To the extent that the NRA doesn’t compromise, they are doing what we told them to do.  To the extent that they do compromise, they are doing it in spite of what we told them to do.

Kurt Hofmann:

… but when he mentions the “[s]ix dead,” he does not bother to mention that half of them were stabbed to death) to segue into his call for more “gun control.”

Eh, doesn’t fit the narrative.  And there’s this: “Ah, so that’s his standard–as long as the government’s recognition of the right to keep and bear arms does not “vanish altogether,” we’re golden. In an instant, shall not be infringed has become “shall not vanish altogether,” and that’s supposed to be good enough for us.”

Not for me, not for Kurt, and shouldn’t be for any of my readers.

Mike Vanderboegh:

The movie is, like all such mass murder historical dramas (Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, etc.) difficult to watch. It also reminded me of something I wrote fifteen years ago now (hard to believe it’s been that long) but wich still retains its relevance: What I Have Learned From the Twentieth Century

And boy this is a tutorial in necessary lessons.  And finally there is this piece that Mike links:

So far, Toys for Totalitarians hasn’t gotten the media coverage Mike hoped for—not in the scandalized mainstream press and (surprisingly) not in the online pro-gun media.

Perhaps not the MSM, but the pro-gun media?  That’s just dead wrong.  David Codrea has covered it, Kurt Hofmann has covered it, and I’ve covered it.  Perhaps she’s talking about the prags?

David Codrea:

The same whistleblower source contacted this correspondent yesterday evening to express the opinion that questions raised in this column’s May 9 report have influenced this latest congressional inquiry. What remains to be seen now is how much stonewalling in response to the letter, which requests a response by June 2, will occur, and how much information Jones will withhold under a claim of “Privacy Act” provisions against disclosing personnel matters.

It’s always nice to see that David is making a difference with highly placed readers.  I have no indication at all that I’ve had such an effect.

David at JPFO:

“[C]ivilians are not allowed to possess machine-guns, military rifles and handguns … private possession of semi-automatic assault weapons [and] private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is prohibited,” the site advises. Add to that licensing, background checks and registration for what they are allowed to own, a prohibition on concealed carry and stiff criminal penalties for gun law violations, and Nigeria is one of those places where the “law-abiding” are at extreme disadvantage.

Boko Haram, which doesn’t let such details slow them down a beat, finds such conditions enabling.

Recall also that we discussed Nigeria and gun control just a few days ago.  David prefaces his remarks by pointing out other problems associated with assistance to Niger.  I had also noted over the weekend that Nigeria is corrupt, with Army generals under investigation for providing weapons to Boko Haram.

Kurt Hofmann:

… the Bureau seems to have painted itself into something of an awkward corner when someone applies for a new machine gun on behalf of a trust.

I’ve seen that among other agencies and bureaus too when the combination of the law, regulation (which isn’t law no matter what you’ve been led to believe), interpretations of regulation, and filed federal register notices and discussions create such a confused entanglement and web of requirements that they are bound to be self contradictory somewhere.  The sad part is that this has never stopped any federal regulator from doing exactly what he wanted to do, in my experience.

Mike Vanderboegh has an interesting discussion on Wayned Hage and his battle with the BLM.  As the situation evolved between the BLM and Mr. Bundy, I also couldn’t help but think of Wayne Hage.

David Codrea:

That’s the culmination of a series of “musical chairs” personnel moves involving Zapor that, per a whistleblower source, have been unwarranted, needlessly expensive, and ultimately, politically protective of management.

The relationship at this level of politics is incestuous.  None of this is surprising, but it’s a good read nonetheless.  And no wonder ATF morale is in the toilet.

Kurt Hofmann:

But back to the original question of bazookas. Why shouldn’t their possession by private citizens be protected? It’s not as if governments never use tanks against private citizens (see attached video), and nor can it be denied that enormous, heavily armored vehicles are becoming more and more routinely part of civilian police agencies’ equipment in the U.S.

We should.  And I should be able to own and M1A1 tank if I can afford it.

Via Mike Vanderboegh, this from The Salt Lake Tribune:

With anti-government sentiments roiling in the aftermath of Cliven Bundy’s Nevada standoff, government workers in western Utah are stripping BLM logos from their vehicles after two motorists brandished a gun and displayed a threatening sign at a federal wrangler who was driving Tuesday in Juab County.

The wrangler was driving a load of horses and burros north on Interstate 15 about 11 a.m. near Mills when a dark blue Dodge 1500 extended-cab pickup pulled up alongside the wrangler. The two occupants “told him he was No. 1 with that certain gesture,” said Eric Reid, the wrangler’s supervisor at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Fillmore Field Office.

It’s insulting to wranglers everywhere to call anyone who works for the BLM a “wrangler.”  As a former wrangler I’d kick the crap out of anyone with the BLM taking such a title.

WRSA has more on the Miami-Dade shooting frenzy by cops.  For the best analysis of what should be done about this, see my commenter Archer.

I’d charge all of them with first-degree murder (one count for each of the two people in the car) with the included lesser offenses of second-degree murder and manslaughter, conspiracy to commit the same (one count for each of the two people in the car), willful negligence/disregard for safety (one count for every bullet fired and another for the chase), endangering the public (one count for every bullet fired and another for the chase), assaulting a police officer (one count for each of the two officers hit by friendly fire), assault with a deadly weapon (one count for each of the two officers hit by friendly fire)…. I could go on. Under Florida’s “10/20/Life” statute, they’d all get 20 years, minimum, EVEN IF the shooting of the two in the car is ruled justified – which would be a stretch given the totally disproportionate amount of force present/used. Watch the media clamor to find a “Stand Your Ground” defense for the “public safety” officers.

After this event, it’s apparent once again that we need controls on assault hammers.

David Codrea:

Titled “Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection eComments Requested; Report of Multiple Sale or Other Disposition of Certain Rifles,” and assigned OMB Number 1140–0100, the 60-day notice abstract declares “The purpose of this information collection is to require Federal Firearms Licensees to report multiple sales or other dispositions whenever the licensee sells or otherwise disposes of two or more rifles within any five consecutive business days with the following characteristics: (a) Semi automatic; (b) a caliber greater than .22; and (c) the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

In the updates and comments, there is still some question as to just how far this goes.  Does this codify the requirement only for border states or does it expand it to all FFLs?  Either way, the ATF is overreaching, a feature of every agency in the Obama administration and a symptom of a larger more pernicious illness.

Kurt Hofmann:

The reporting requirement was imposed by raw executive fiat. A similar requirement for multiple handgun purchases, in contrast, is mandated by federal law. A blatantly unconstitutional law, to be sure, but at least that requirement has the thin veneer of legitimacy of having received the blessing of Congress.

At least when the communists in Congress have been involved, part of the constitution has been followed (albeit neglecting the most important part – our protections in the Bill of Rights).  But the ATF knows that there is no constitutional provision for what it is doing.

WRSA has a must read piece on more police piggishness, oddly enough by Mark Steyn.  Read every word of Mark’s article.  And there is this.

The District Court found for the coppers, and so did the Fifth Circuit, ruling that “Get your fucking hands off my mom” constituted a “verbal threat” and, from a guy on his knees 15-20 feet away, “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers” – rather than (as we approach Mother’s Day) what ought to be the sentiment of any self-respecting young man seeing somebody physically assault his mom.

The district court and the officer who perpetrated this evil had better watch their six should they ever do this to my wife of mother.

I had to miss Mike on Alan Colmes, but there is this.

Acrimonious, but fun. My favorite line: “You know, I’ve been warning about the possibility of civil war caused by government bad conduct for the past 20 years, but it wasn’t until I started mentioning that collectivist senators were putting their own testicles at risk that people started paying attention. I think I must have accidentally put my finger on where you fellers worship — if you can stand THAT mental picture.”

Alan Colmes and his radio show?  Worthless.  The telephone call in?  Pennies.  Mike’s line: Priceless.

Finally, if you want some pure gun porn, look here and here (be warned, it will take you a while).