Not Dead, Just Too Busy

I am trying to return to our regularly scheduled programming, but it’s not working out. I have been collecting clients over the past year, which is good because it’s how you stay in business in the consulting universe. But at the end of this year they’ve all gotten needy at once, and the blog has to be what pays the price. It’s not so much the writing that takes the time, but following the news. I haven’t been following the news. Bloomberg could be abandoning Everytown and investing in American Outdoor Brands Corporation for all I know.

I think my crazy few weeks is because everyone in the professional world likes to take the last few weeks of the year off, and so deadlines tend to get compressed from Thanksgiving through New Years to accommodate people’s time off. I appreciate everyone’s patience.

Nevada Being Primed for More Bloomberg Funded Ballot Initiatives

Nevada voters very narrowly approved a ballot measure that ended private firearms transfers, at least officially. Unofficial the law is unenforceable, and most chief LEOs in the state aren’t going to enforce it. But the purpose never was to just get a private transfer ban in place and then move on. The purpose is to build the organization necessary (even if it’s paid organization funded by Bloomberg) to rinse and repeat on the ballot, nibbling away at the edges until they get something they really want. The groundwork is now being laid to put a magazine ban on the ballot in Nevada. This is why you need to convince people to vote “no.” I don’t care how sensible it sounds. I don’t care even if it is sensible. By voting yes, you will be enabling Bloomberg to keep going back again and again. We’ve seen it in Washington, and now Nevada has signaled it is willing to follow the same model. You know where I’ll bet he won’t be headed back to the ballot trough? Maine. Because Mainers told him to go f*** himself.

Pearl Harbor, 75 Years Later

Today marks 75 years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which brought this country into World War II. We were out in Hawaii two months ago and visited the Arizona memorial. All these years later, it’s still leaking oil:

Oil Slick: USS Arizona Memorial

This aircraft hangar on Ford Island, now part of the Pacific Aviation Museum, also bears the scars:

Hangar 79 Ford Island

It’s worth noting that not all the casualties of Pearl Harbor died December 7. Men were trapped for weeks on the Oklahoma, after it capsized. Inside the West Virginia, three men were stuck for 16 days inside an airtight storeroom until they expired. They knew this because they were crossing off days on a calendar.

USS Oklahoma Memorial

USS Oklahoma Memorial. There are not many veterans still alive today. The National Park Service, which administers the Arizona Memorial, has a program to return survivors to be laid to rest with their shipmates after they die. Today NPS is interring two survivors who have since died. One is a twin whose brother didn’t make it.

 

Future of the Gun Rights Movement Open Thread

I am swamped, and probably will be all week. So I don’t have as much time to post anything. One thing to talk about is the future of the Gun Rights Movement. Here’s some things that we have to look forward to:

  • We’ll almost certainly get National Reciprocity at some point. I think there’s probably a good chance we don’t get that until 2018, unless the NRA has found a few extra votes to get past 60 in the Senate.
  • If Trump lives up to his word on Supreme Court picks, nearly all of the people on the list he floated were acceptable from a Second Amendment point of view. My fear is that we’d need to replace one of the Heller dissenter with a solid pro-2A vote, because either Kennedy or Roberts is soft on the Second Amendment. To be honest, I don’t think it’s Kennedy, so I’m not certain Kennedy’s retirement would fix anything.
  • NRA did very very well with Barack Obama in the White House. Will they keep 5 million members? I know they’ll be claiming that number for a while, even if it drops back to 4 million. But will NRA have issues holding members?
  • I think we can get suppressors delisted from the National Firearms Act. Talk of repealing Hughes or delisting machine guns from NFA are fantasy land. The next step after suppressors would be SBRs and SBSs.
  • I’d like to see simple legislation that states may not restrict the sale or possession of any firearm, ammunition, magazines or other firearm accessory if possession of those items would generally be legal under federal law. That would end the era of state gun bans.

Head of Everytown: Throw the Book at Them

John Feinblatt is Bloomberg’s chosen leader for Everytown. He was a muckety muck in Bloomberg’s Administration as Mayor of New York City, and has been involved in Bloomberg’s gun control efforts since the beginning. He pens an article in the Daily News, which I will address point by point. The gist of the article is that NRA doesn’t really mean it when they say “enforce the laws we already have,” and so Feinblatt offers his own ideas on what that means:

For decades, though, NRA lobbyists have fought to suppress trace data, even using the federal budget to try to limit intelligence-sharing among law enforcement.

You might recall when that data was freely available before, it was used to target high-volume gun shops for lawsuits with the intent of putting them out of business. It is still available to law enforcement for bonafide investigations. It’s just not available to people like Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign, and they are butthurt about that.

To help catch more murderers and gun criminals, it can also advance an investigative tool called microstamping …

Yes, a tool so great even UC Davis had to admit it was bullshit. Additionally, both California and New York have both passed Microstamping laws, but have yet to issue any regulations about it. Why? Because it’s a bullshit issue and even the bureaucrats know it. I’m a bit disappointed in Mr. Feinblatt here. This is the kind of pie in the sky dreaming I’d expect from the Brady Campaign.

Good old-fashioned communication can boost enforcement, too. Felons broke the law and tried to buy a gun more than 40,000 times last year alone — yet they rarely face any consequences, beyond the gun store turning them away.

This is actually one area I disagree with the NRA on, and one area I’m pretty sure they are mostly sincere in wanting stronger enforcement. The reason most of those felons who tried to break the law aren’t prosecuted is that most of them are non-violent felons who are no threat to anyone. It would be a waste of public resources to prosecute and incarcerate them. If the prohibitions on felons was limited to violent felons, and was part of their conviction, I would have little issue with more rigorous enforcement.

We all know the reason prosecution rates for NICS denials are low, but no one wants to admit it: I’m not all that worried about the dude who gets a NICS denial because a decade ago he cheated on his taxes, and no one else is either. Yet any felony, including tax evasion, regulatory crimes like importing a lobster in the wrong bag, possessing a bald eagle feather, and having a bit too much pot on you will earn you a lifetime prohibition.

There’s actually no federal gun trafficking law, and “straw purchasing” a gun for a criminal is nothing more than a paperwork violation.

This is an outright lie, and it’s one repeated often by gun control advocates. Straw purchasing, that is buying a firearm for someone else, anyone else, is a federal felony with a 10 year prison sentence. Many states have analogue crimes with similarly harsh sentences. The exception is if you wanted to buy a gift for your wife or brother. But if someone gives you money to buy a firearm for them, and you do, that’s a straw purchase. It is also unlawful sell guns to people who are residents of another state without being a licensed dealer. Only Federal Firearms Licensees may ship firearms via common carrier (there are exceptions to this, like shipping a gun to an FFL for repair) out of their home state to a non-licensee. So there is a federal trafficking statute, even if it’s not explicitly called that.

The issue they have, when you really analyze their arguments in this area, is that it can sometimes be hard for the state to meet its burden in prosecuting federal gun law violations. Rather than viewing that as a feature, necessary to prevent ordinary people tangled in the web of non-violent federal crimes, gun controllers have always viewed the state’s burden as a bug, and consistently support weakening or eliminating due process when it comes to gun violations.

Levi Strauss Being Anti-Gun is Nothing New

Big news that hit yesterday is that Levi Strauss CEO doesn’t want firearms in their stores. I’ve gotten to the point, after Shannon Watts’ various shakedowns, I couldn’t care less what they say: if they don’t post against it doesn’t mean anything. But Levi Strauss has a history, and it’s a big reason I don’t buy their products, and haven’t for a number of years. I planned today to outline this in detail, but I noticed that Miguel beat me to it, so I don’t have to! That’s good. I’m working against two deadlines until Monday.

I buy my jeans from L.L. Bean. I love their flannel lined Double-L jeans for the winter. L.L. Bean’s owners are libertarians, so there isn’t an issue there. They are also located in Maine, and wouldn’t you rather help the economy of a state that told Bloomberg to go eff himself this past election, rather than help the economy of San Francisco?