Danger in Illinois

The two anti-gun bills have passed out of committee, as is reported by TBCKADOOT. It’s critical to crush these on the house floor, and then turn around and push the anti-2A forces back further than they would have been pushed had they not tried this stunt.

Source of the Chardon Shooter’s Gun

The gun was his grandfathers, and he stole it. The grandfather noticed it was missing from his barn after the shooting and believes it’s the same one. It’s a Ruger Mk. III target pistol, which is probably one of the most commonly owned pistols out there. I own two, one Mk. III and the previous Mk. II generation.

I’ve noticed that chatter from the gun control crowd has been very light today. You almost have to wonder if they are disappointed it wasn’t something they could paint as a high-power bullet spraying death machine. Or, perhaps they are merely tired. Two days of exploiting tragedy for political gain can take a lot out of you.

Some News From D.C.

Apparently the DC City Counsel is considering eliminating the five hour training requirement to get a handgun. Emily Miller deserves a lot of credit for this, I believe. I just went upstairs to make sure the skies weren’t filled with winged porcines.

No more ballistics tests either. Don’t for a minute think that City Council in DC is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts and their love of the Constitution. They are doing this because they know if Emily Miller goes before Congress, then Congress is going to preempt them from regulating guns at all. They are trying to deal with the threat Emily Miller poses to their ability to regulate firearms.

UPDATE: No more having to re-register either. You can kind of see what laws they want to preserve, namely their registration scheme, the restrictions on so-called assault weapons, and various other issues. It’s kind of amazing that antis have such a gut reaction to semi-automatics firearms, given that they accept the most popular pistols, and rifles are so rarely used in crime as to not be worth worrying about.

UPDATE: No more vision test.

UPDATE: The bill still has to be approved by the entire City Council, and enter a 60-day review by Congress. Law likely to go into effect this summer.

The Myth That Police Support Gun Control

Our opponents in the gun control movement often claim to be sticking up for law enforcement officers, and officer safety, even though I don’t believe for a minute they won’t disarm cops given half the chance. But our opponents don’t speak for law enforcement, or rather, they speak for a very small minority of police officers. Take the 23rd Survey of Chiefs of Police and Sheriffs in the United States. Also see the 22nd survey, and you’ll notice the numbers haven’t gotten any better for the gun control crowd.

The 2011 survey shows that 77% of Chiefs and Sheriffs surveyed support the NRA agenda of H.R.822, universal reciprocity among states. 98% support civilian ownership of firearms by the law-abiding. 74% believe law-abiding armed citizens can be of assistance to professional law enforcement. This is what happens when you poll actual cops, rather than a small number of big city police chiefs who join Joyce funded front organizations.

Still in Denial

Miguel points out our friends at CSGV are spilling more ink on ridiculous claims of no defensive gun use. They even acknowledge the DOJ study that says 80,000 – 100,000 defensive gun uses a year, but dismiss the study because “they don’t apply any value judgement to say whether they were warranted or not.”

Miguel correctly points out threatening someone with a gun who doesn’t deserve it is called Assault with a Deadly Weapon. True in Florida. In Pennsylvania it’s actually Simple Assault if you only threaten someone with a gun, but it’s a second degree misdemeanor, which is up to two years in prison. The simple fact that most of these folks weren’t charged should indicate that DGUs are real, and numerous.

A Review of Act of Valor

Over at Tam’s. I will have to go see this movie:

The plot is not Hitchcockian: Some bad guys are going to try and do bad things to America. A bunch of SEALs are attempting to stop them, mostly by shooting them in the face. They don’t sit around and anguish over the deep meaning of shooting terrorists in the face, either; they make like a Nike commercial and Just Do It.

Read the whole thing.

Primary Day

We’re watching the results from Michigan come in, and Mitt or Rick, I can’t say it matters either way. I dislike both of them for different reasons, but to be honest, if it comes down to a race between Santorum and Romney, I’m going with Romney. At this point there’s not anyone I really like in the race, and I’ll take someone with no convictions over someone with the wrong convictions (like sticking your nose into everyone’s bedrooms).

In other news, if Tim Pawlenty isn’t kicking himself for dropping out, he ought to be. If he’s not, I’ll be happy to kick him. He’s is not perfect either, but he’s a sight better than either of these two. Bitter got to speak with Governor Pawlenty at the kickoff for Sportsmen for McCain back in 2008, and was impressed with him. Start speaking to a lot of politicians about our issues, and you get platitudes like this, because they don’t really care about, or understand the issue, except that they don’t want to anger gun owners, and would like their votes. They just know the basic 2A talking points, and hope that’s all you know too. Pawlenty knew the issue well, and could speak favorably on a number of topics important to gun owners, including carry rights. But no use concerning ourselves about what could have been… back to reality.

On the Semantics of Service

Arma Borealis takes a look at Colin Goddard’s claim that he was in the army for two years, when he was an ROTC cadet for two years. This isn’t semantics I’d get too worked up over, but I was never in the military. For those that have been, I understand this kind of distinction is more important.

UPDATE: More from Chris in Alaska of Arma Borealis in the comments.

The Canadian Gun Control Movement’s Bridge Too Far

Like the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was for the gun control movement in the United States, the long gun registry might turn out to be a bridge too far for the Canadian gun control movement:

“The vote against the registry was a historic day, no two ways about it,” says National Firearms Association spokesman Blair Hagen. “But we’re still opposed to a licensing system that makes paper criminals out of peaceful firearms owners.” The NFA’s ongoing complaints with guns laws range from “possession-only” certification introduced in 1998—which forced all gun owners to acquire a licence, when previously you just needed a licence to purchase a gun—to still-standing provisions in C-68 for warrantless searches of homes by firearms inspectors. “We’re not so much celebrating the defeat of part of a particularly hated law, as we are coming to the realization that reform is possible,” says Hagen.

Read the whole thing. This is what has energized our movement as well; the realization that we could not only stop them, we could push them back to the point of near destruction. But we kept pushing, kept talking to gun owners, and kept waking them up to what was happening, and what our opponents end game was. A big source of our success, I think, is getting more women involved in shooting. Canadian shooters would do well to emulate that. Women are, surprisingly, much easier to radicalize on the issue of gun rights then men are. I don’t know what that is, but it is.

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t

Our opponents are generally quick to tell us that the first clause of the Second Amendment is the defining one, but when a state takes steps to create itself a well-regulated militia, our opponents balk and cry foul.

So let me get this straight, I only have a right to bear arms in a well-regulated militia, who’s existence the fanatic leaders of the gun control movement are going to fight and decry when one is proposed into existence? One thing the leaders of the gun control movement need to get clear is there’s no such thing in our Constitutional framework as a militia that “would not be under the authority of both the state and federal government,” per the quote from CSGV. Any state militia is subject to being called into the service of the United States, regardless of what the Arizona Revised Statutes have to say about it.