2013 – Page 8 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Still a Great Victory for Colorado Gun Owners

Despite the fact that it appears Evie Hudak is going to preemptively resignÂ in order to preserve Democratic control over the Senate, her resignation is still a significant victory for Colorado gun owners. She would still have her seat had the pressure not been applied. No politician wants to be faced with the loss of a seat, and I view her preemptive resignation as an act of desperation on the part of Colorado Democrats. It is indeed time to focus on 2014. If Colorado gun owners truly seek repeal, the current Democratic leadership, who gladly sold the state to the interests of the Obama Administration and the Mayor of New York City, has to be replaced.

At the very least, now having three heads makes it unlikely Colorado Democrats will seek to embrace more gun control for the foreseeable future.Â Hickenlooper would be a choice prize himself. I don’t know how possible that is, but unfortunately the Colorado GOP has a habit of backing lackluster candidates.

Evie Hudak Resigns BEFORE Recall Certification

Yesterday, it was rumor that only if recall organizers in Colorado managed to force a recall that Sen. Evie Hudak would resign in exchange for special perks in choosing her replacement in the Senate and on her committee in order to keep the Democratic Party in charge in the Senate. That kind of naked power grab doesn’t sit well with many people, as evidenced by even the comments here on our report from yesterday’s rumor.

This morning, the local media picked up on the rumors, and suddenly Hudak announced that she is instead going to resign before the recall petition signatures are even due.

According to the early report, part of Hudak’s initial deal with Democratic Party leaders was that they would go all out for her to keep a recall from even happening. They certainly tried that by getting quite nasty with phone calls and lit drops that implied anyone signing the recall petitions was giving their personal information to sex offenders and criminals.

While Colorado’s Senate remains in the hands of Democrats for now, this is a prime opportunity to start focusing on 2014’s political punishment for backing gun control.

Colorado Rumors of Resignation

Reader Adam Z. sent along this report of political gossip in Colorado that Sen. Evie Hudak, the latest Democratic lawmaker up for recall, has agreed to resign if there are enough signatures to have an election.

Having a recall election is risky because it can apparently send the Colorado Senate into GOP hands, something the party wants to stop at all costs. By having Sen. Hudak resign instead of face recall, the Democrats get to appoint a successor and keep the Senate control. In exchange for her not risking the Party’s control, she would, according to the site, get a say in who replaces her.

Latest MAIG Mayor in Trouble

I meant to post this yesterday, but forgot. For anyone who hasn’t yet heard about the video of the Monticello, NY Mayors Against Illegal Guns member who was arrested recently, well, you should go check out some of the video at Miguel’s blog.

However, for those of you who don’t have the time to run a video that runs about an hour and a half, I watched it for you. Here are the extra special highlights:

When the first officer comes in, Mayor Gordon Jenkins (who identifies himself several times in the video) reminds the officer that he got the officer his job in the first place and that he knows his family. It’s not really a coherent attempt at intimidation since the Mayor, to me, comes off as quite belligerent at this point.

Then, it gets really weird. He goes on about how he doesn’t care if he dies tomorrow before issuing a warning to the officer: “Be careful how you f***in f*** with people…just be careful how you f***in f*** with people.” That still falls into the belligerent territory in my opinion. However, when it starts getting into what people might interpret as real threats is where it gets interesting: “Down the road, you’re going to say, ‘Why did I do that to that man?’ and you’re going to pay for it.”

After ranting about the time he might serve in jail, he says this about his plans for his release: “Mayor or dog catcher, I’m going to be on your ass.”

The Mayor is held for a long time because they wanted to notify the Police Chief about his arrest so he could handle it. Unfortunate, the Chief was out hunting. When the Mayor is informed that the Chief is unavailable at that very moment, the Mayor’s response is this: “The chief’s got to pay for this.”

After a bit more time talking about how the officers “got to pay for this,” an officer finally asked him if he was issuing a threat. The Mayor claims he was not issuing a threat. However, the next major action in the video is the Mayor getting up out of his chair and using his free arm to rip a clock off the wall and throw it rather violently toward the front desk just outside of the room he’s held in. Seconds later, he kicks the chair he was sitting in across the room. According to an officer who came in to check on him, the clock was broken during the Mayor’s fit.

Keep in mind that this Mayor is actually due in court soon for his 2012 arrest for hitting and injuring a local police officer in an altercation outside of his beauty supply store. And, yet, MAIG still proudly boasts him as an ally as of today on their website.

Then again, this is apparently what Mayor Gordon Jenkins thinks about the importance of his public service as an elected official: “The f***in’ mayorship don’t mean nothing.”

What Will Happen to the Undetectable Firearms Act?

The Undetectable Firearms Act was introduced into the 100th Congress back in the year 1988 by our good friend William Hughes. Yes, that Hughes. It was in response to the big plastic gun scare that was whipped up by Handgun Control Inc, former name of the Brady Campaign, back in the days when they were relevant. NRA opposed the original bill, but dropped opposition to the bill once its requirements no longer met the the criteria of any actual guns currently in production. In other words, the bill had no actual, practical impact.

If nothing is done, the UFA will expire on December 9th. This is not the first time it has has been set to expire. The first expiration date was ten years after the first enactment, in 1998. In 1998, it was extended for five additional years. In 2003, it was again extended for an additional ten years. Given that it’s been readily extended by both parties, I have no expectation that we have a prayer of stopping extension. The big threat is that the UFA will be expanded to include a ban on manufacturing a polymer receivers or magazines by non-FFLs, even if the polymer used is doped with a chemical that renders it radiopaque, or is made from a polymer that is dense enough to be easily x-ray detectable. This is because it also must contain enough metal that it sets off an x-ray machine calibrated to the security exemplar.Â The existing UFA law regarding metal content only applies to the entire firearms, minus grips, stocks, and magazines. By creating a separate requirement, applicable only to non-licensees, it effectively bans home fabrication, or smithing done under the auspices of a dealer FFL, which is typically sufficient for gunsmiths. Additionally, it also creates a requirement to have a manufacturer’s FFL to create magazines, which is not currently the case.

I am not optimistic we have the juice to stop UFA renewal outright. We haven’t any time in the past, when this outlawed what only existed in the imaginations of our opponents. But 3D printed plastic guns have been all over the news. Even people at work are asking me about it the topic. We might all know this is really nothing new, and that a plastic gun is about as much of a threat to the person pulling the trigger as it is to the person it’s being pointed at, but the public does not generally know these things. This law getting expanded to restrict hobbyists is a very real possibility, and something worth contacting your congress critters over.

More on that Well-Regulated Thing

Dave Hardy looks at the history books and finds the term well-regulated being used in contexts where it unambiguously means well-functioning, orderly, and organized.Â One of the big turds that Dick Metcalfe stepped on, was to parrot the other side’s distortion that “well-regulated” meantÂ “tightly controlled and subject to much regulation.” Research on this matter has clearly shown that it was not understood that way at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. It goes back to the analogy, almost a tired one at this point:

“A well-educated electorate, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to print and read publications shall not be infringed.”

But our opponents don’t want to accept the plain English, even now, long past the point where well-regulated could possibly be interpreted as a tactic endorsement for controls by anyone who actually has honestly done the research.

Growing up, I never had any ideas that the Second Amendment meant anything other than what it plainly says, because I can read. I didn’t find out the words were a controversy until I was an adult, and the audacity of those on the other side, to subvert the plain language, is part of the reason I got into activism. I went through most of the Clinton years not understanding how the Assault Weapons Ban was even remotely constitutional, and wondering why nothing was done about it. When I found out, I became angry.

California to Get Even Dumber on Guns

They now want air guns to come in translucent colors, so they look like toys. The only problem with his is air guns are not toys, and should be not treated like toys. They are capable of causing serious injury. What got that 13 year old kid killed was the fact that he was treating something that was not a toy as if it were. The solution is for parents to teach their kids to treat air guns with the same respect they would afford regular firearms.

I’m really surprised that California hasn’t figured out a way to generate electricity from all those jerking knees. It’d solve all the state’s energy difficulties if they could.

Monday News Links

Trying to do a little more blogging over the weekend to make up for being busy during the week. We will be taking a break from the blog somewhat during the holiday weekend, but given how dry the news cycle has been, you might not notice. Seems a collapse of the health care system is something people really want to pay attention to!

Vancouver bans doorknobs. No, seriously. But notice how the nanny staters have infiltrated even Popular Science? If your house has knobs, and you want levers, it’s an easy thing to negotiate at sale. It’s cheap. A few hundred bucks would do my whole house. But I hate levers because they get caught on things.

“If you ignore the adrenaline dumps and the blood pressure spikes this is a very, very good book.” – Joe Huffman on “Emily Gets her Gun.” More here.

More on the Melissa Bachman controversy: Stupidity is a luxury.

Outgoing NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly blind to his gun control hypocrisy.

Bigotry on parade. I would be ashamed to have such low quality followers. Not that we don’t have intolerant ignoramuses on our side, but I’ve never agreed with running things in such a way as to attract them.

The gun control groups hit a new low when it comes to deception: when you can’t achieve, just lie about it.

Surprising strength in the GOPÂ with female hispanic candidates.

Via Instapundit, a tale of an SR-71 pilot who survived his aircraft breaking up at 78,000 feet and Mach 3. Well worth reading. It was amazing they put that aircraft together with what was essentially 1950s technology.

Why opposition to gun control has increased. I think there’s more to it than that.

Canadians get fun toys we don’t because in some ways their import laws are less strict than ours.

Against Basic Tenets of American Justice

I do believe that it is, in fact, a basic tenet of not only American justice, but of English justice, that when one is found not guilty of a charge, that means all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizenship are fully restored. Sadly, it seems our opponents in the gun control movement don’t even believe in that:

The irony of all of this is that he has already killed someone with a gun but he got his guns and his rights back after the trial. Why? Because that is what the gun rights extremists want. They think it’s perfectly fine for someone like George Zimmerman to be able to possess and carry lethal weapons around even after that person has already killed someone with a gun.

He was found not guilty of the crime of murder by a jury of his peers. So yes, that is what I want. I want people who are found not guilty to not be punished by the law as if they had been. If that makes me a “gun rights extremist,” I’ll wear the banner proudly. I tend to think that just makes me a believer in the basic tenets of justice and human rights.

Regardless of what kind of trouble Zimmerman has found himself in since his acquittal (to me it almost seems like he wants to go to jail) he has not yet been found guilty of any crime serious enough to warrant deprivation of rights. Do the leaders of the gun control movement really want to argue that people found not guilty of crimes should be punished anyway? Do you really want to argue that someone found not guilty of a crime should be found guilty anyway, just because you know he’s guilty? If you think that, pardon me if I do question your patriotism, and belief in the basic legal institutions that have served this country for more than two centuries.

A Guilty Pleasure

I am actually a closet connoisseur of conspiracy theories and various forms of eccentricity. I don’t believe in them, but I’m fascinated by them and by those who do, especially those who believe enough to go to jail. This guy is a quality eccentric, right down to the manner of dress. The world would indeed be a duller place without people like this:

â€œI cannot maâ€™am,â€Â Tertelgte continued. â€œI have to honor the founders maâ€™am. I honor the memory of those who fought and died that we can be free of this type of thing.â€

Tertelgte was then ordered out of the court room and two officers asked him to stand up.

â€œIf I stand up I give you recognition,â€ he said. â€œNo, pick me up. I cannot give you recognition.â€

Awesome. The linked article includes video.

UPDATE: Here’s more information on what he was speaking about in regards to the prosecuting attorney:

The American Bar is an offshoot from London Lawyers’ Guild & was established by people with invasive monopolistic goals in mind. In 1909 they incorporated this TRAITOROUS group in the state of Illinois & had the State Legislature (which was under the control of lawyers) pass an unconstitutional law that only members of this powerful union of lawyers, called the “ABA,” could practice law & hold all the key positions in law enforcement & the making of laws.

Attorneys also use the title “Esquire” which is, in the view of people who believe this, a title of nobility, and prohibited by the Constitution. You have to admit it has a certain logic to it. He did get up and scream about fringed flags in his arraignment, but declaring the Court to be administering British Ministerial Law is a new one I hadn’t heard of before.