Year: 2009
Luzerne County Gun Buyback
It looks like they will be holding one this Tuesday. Â Once again they don’t offer cash. No buyback programs in this state seem to offer cash anymore, probably because they know how we use those programs. Either way, if you’re in the area and not doing much, you might want to hang about in a public area near the station and see what folks are bringing in. We lose history through these programs, which is a travesty. Though keep in mind you have to transfer pistols through a sheriff or FFL in Pennsylvania. Still, any C&R folks out there might want to go save the good stuff.
Times Square Shooter Gun Not a Machine Pistol
I think the evidence is pointing more strongly to it being a semi-auto MAC-10 clone, rather than a fully automatic MAC-10 machine pistol. There are already a few news sources that suggest that. That’s not stopping Abby Spangler from Tweeting hysterics and promoting articles like this. What really seals the deal for me are the articles talking about the circumstances surrounding how the gun ended up in the wrong hands. What’s being described is not the NFA process, so that rules out it being a machine pistol. From Wikipedia on the MAC-10:
In the United States, fully automatic MAC-10 machine pistols are NFA articles, and probably the least expensive (relative; Approximate cost as of Q1 2009 is $3,600 US +/-)[6] automatic weapons on the American market. A large number of semi-completed sheet metal frame flats were given serial numbers before the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, and this made it possible to complete the manufacture of registered MAC-10s for the civilian market after the 1986 production freeze took effect. There were also a few thousand semi-automatic pistols and carbines that were based on the original MAC-10 design. These were made in open-bolt and later in closed-bolt designs, in response to ATF rule changes that banned semi-auto open bolt designs, beginning in the early 1980s.
It’s likely one of the few thousand semi-auto pistols out there, likely a closed-bolt semi-auto made by Cobray. Having once owned one, they are indeed unreliable and poorly made. Interesting that Abby Spangler of Protest Easy Guns and Mike Bloomberg of MAIG are speaking about needing to do something about illegal guns, and passing things like requiring guns be reported lost and stolen when:
- The gun used by the Times Square shooter was stolen
- The gun was reported stolen to the police.
The Associated Press article would seem to indicate the police don’t believe her. Criminals lying to the police about guns being stolen in order to cover up their involvement in a straw purchase is common, which is why Pennsylvania recently made lying to the police about a stolen gun more illegal. You can’t make this stuff more illegal.
More Criticism of MFFA Lawsuit
Is There Any Such Thing as An Illegal Gun?
I’ve had a surprising number of people in the comments try to suggest that there’s no such thing as an illegal gun, any more than there’s an illegal wrench, illegal car, or illegal bat. I am going to agree that it’s not precise English, and I’m certainly not going to defend MAIG’s use and abuse of the term, but I think one has to take care to compare like contexts in order to determine whether the term is malapropos.
It doesn’t make much sense to apply the term to a car, because a car isn’t illegal in very many contexts, except to drive on the public road without registration, but we generally refer to that as an unregistered vehicle. I suspect if guns were registered, you’d also hear that term applied to guns, and you do in jurisdictions that’s the case. It also doesn’t make much sense to apply the term to bats or wrenches for the same reason, though you can imagine hearing the term “illegal bat” in sporting context, even though bats are generally legal in most contexts.
But there are plenty of uses in English for the adjective “illegal” to describe objects that are generally legal, but are unlawful in certain contexts. You can imagine for instance a newspaper report saying “A man was caught by police selling illegal drugs to Children. In his possession were several bottles of Oxycontin.” or perhaps “The DUI arrest was made after police found an illegal open container filled with beer under the driver’s seat.” or if you really want an odd but similar context, “The man imported the lobsters in an illegal bag.”
So I think it’s reasonable to say there is such a thing as an illegal gun, even though the same gun would be legal in different hands or a different context, just as some drugs are legal or illegal depending on context, open containers of beer are legal or illegal depending on the context, and bags are generally always legal until you try to import lobsters in the wrong one. It might not be the most precise English that could be used, and Bloomberg is certainly abusing the term, but I don’t agree that “illegal gun” is malapropos.
Great Train Gunnery
Clayton Cramer shows that when it comes to guns on trains, attitudes used to be different.
One Reason I Hate Bloomberg’s Group
Every time I use the term “illegal gun” now, I feel like I’m playing into Bloomberg’s hands. Bloomberg’s real innovation in the gun control movement was figuring out what to call it. Originally we had “gun control,” but that ended up with negative connotations being associated with it. Then you had Andrew McKelvey‘s group Americans for Gun Safety, adopt the “gun safety” model, with a newly renamed Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control Inc.) buying into this model for a while as well. Perhaps because most people of reasonable intelligence know guns are dangerous, and are meant to be dangerous, the “gun safety” mantra didn’t fare too well, so the gun control movement tried to do a false flag model with AHSA, which also failed, and was forced to turn to a shill for the Democratic Party in order to survive.
Bloomberg’s real genius, or I should say the real genius of the people he has working for him, is that they understood there’s one thing pretty much everyone agrees we ought to do something about, and that’s illegal guns, which most people take to mean guns in the hands of criminals. By reframing the current gun control agenda into a righteous struggle to battle illegal guns, Bloomberg can steal more legitimacy, and get people to listen, who might not otherwise care about “gun control” and its closely related and equally discredited cousin “gun safety.” So when I use the term “illegal guns” I feel like I’m playing right into Bloomberg’s hands in trying to recast the whole Brady agenda in a positive light.
This is disappointing, because we ought to be able to have a real dialog about illegal guns (criminals with guns) in this country without having to worry about the bait and switch tactics of a group like MAIG confounding the issue by pushing for more gun control on the law abiding under the ruse of something we’re all legitimately concerned about.
Inquirer Confused About Straw Purchasing
I don’t think the Inquirer gets how a straw purchase works, based on this article about a trafficker who was convicted in federal court for illegally selling a gun to a cop killer. They title it “‘Straw’ man convicted”:
Kudos to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives who tracked the weapon. But the route of the gun into the hands of a killer proved all too common: Lashley, barred from owning a gun because of an earlier drug conviction, bought it from a man who purchased the gun legally in South Carolina. Lashley brought it to Philadelphia and, eventually, it came into Giddings’ possession.
This is one of those cases where I think reporters are legitimately confused. I forgive them for that. What I don’t forgive them for is editorializing based on their ignorance, and blaming the National Rifle Association for the state of affairs. But that aside, let us attempt to educate any reporters who may happen across this post.
First off, the title is wrong. The ‘Straw’ man was not convicted. Lashley was a gun trafficker and a felon-in-possession. He was not the straw man. Lashley, being prohibited under federal and state law from owning a firearm, and not being a resident of South Carolina, cannot buy a gun there, so he has to put up a straw man who can trick the dealer into making the sale, and pass the background check. The straw man in this case is Jason Mack, who is currently serving a 36-month sentence for his role in the straw purchase.
Straw purchasing is quite properly a felony, is a federal crime, and a state crime most places. There is nothing “legal,” to quote the Inquirer, about a straw purchase. Both parties, the person who puts the straw man up, and the straw man himself, are committing felonies. It is easy to prove this crime when authorities are properly motivated, as we see here, in the case of going after the person who’s illegal gun trafficking ended up contributing to another convicted felon killing a police officer. It is indeed good work on the part of federal authorities, but laws already exist for prosecuting this crime if we only take the crime seriously. Whining that the NRA is getting in the way of this, when the NRA has been consistent that we should actually enforce the laws on straw purchasing, is disingenuous. Here it might be based partly out of ignorance, but I think reporters and editorial boards should make some effort to understand the law before throwing accusations at others, and calling for more unneeded restrictions.
Bloomberg Blaming the Guns
According to Bloomberg the shooting in Times Square, which apparently involved a machine pistol:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the shooting while appearing at a Manhattan charity event, and he used the question to discuss one of his signature issues — illegal firearms and gun violence in New York and other big cities.
“We’ve got to stop this,” Bloomberg said. “This is one of the great public health threats. And our police officers are clearly in danger.”
The restrictions on machine pistols are among the strictest I think one can imagine, without making them pretty much blanket illegal, except for military use. It is extraordinarily difficult and expensive for an ordinary citizen to acquire a machine pistol. Most gun owners don’t even really understand what the law is on machine guns and as a general rule don’t bother. If you have the money and the patience, it’s possible to get one, assuming they are legal in your state, which they are not in New York.
Now, I hold out the possibility that this was not a machine pistol at all, but an ordinary semi-automatic pistol that was decked out to look like a machine pistol, since the report says it fired twice and jammed, which is a distinct possibility even with a full-auto MAC-10. They aren’t famed for their reliability.
But one wonders what regulations Bloomberg thinks is going to prevent guns from being stolen from gun owners, short of forbidding them from having them. Bloomberg’s ruse about illegal guns is just that — a ruse. His real purpose is to keep gun owners on the defensive so he will be on better ground when we start dismantling New York City’s gun laws through the courts.
I fully believe now that I will one day walk in Times Square legally carrying a firearm, and there won’t be a damned thing Michael Bloomberg will be able to do about it. That’s what he’s really afraid of.
UPDATE: Beatbox notices in the comments that despite MAIG’s hysterics about Tiahrt, it didn’t seem to interfere with the NYPD’s ability to find out the origins of the gun, and that it was stolen.
The Fallout
Here’s some of the fallout from MAIG’s polling data:
Politicians should understand that most of these people polled are probably not NRA members, and are probably not really familiar with the issues they are being presented. If we had polled on “assault weapons” bans back in the early 90s, you’d probably see similar support to some of the measures MAIG is supporting now. But gun owners got a rude education when they found out it was their M1 Carbine, M1As, and AR-15s that the politicians were actually talking about. They got an even ruder education when they paid attention to the issue and found out about plans to enhance the ban to cover even more semi-automatics like the M1 Garand. The gig is up on that, and that issue is poison today politically, everywhere except the few states where the antis have been successful at destroying the shooting culture.
Once these folks realize that “closing the terror gap” means their buddy can’t buy a gun because someone suspected of being a terrorist used a name that matches his once, they are going to be very angry, and they will tell every other gun owner they know, who will also get angry. Once they realize “closing the gun show loophole” means they have to pay $50 dollars to transfer a gun to their shooting buddy to avoid becoming a felon, they are going to get angry and do the same.
This is a bad issue to be on the wrong side of, and for what? What does gun control bring to the table? There’s no votes there. You can’t even win on that issue in New York City, and look at how much good it did to help pull Jon Corzine’s ass from the fire?