Thursday News Links

With the latest mass shooting at Fort Hood, there’s obviously going to be a lot of reaction. As I mentioned yesterday, our opponents have a poor track record of exploiting this kind of situation, but surely they will try:

MAIG/MDA’s statement on the Fort Hood shooting. I notice that it appears that John Feinblatt is now the Chairman of MAIG, which I’m guessing means that Bloomberg is now employing him instead of New York City taxpayers. Should have always been that way.

Piers Morgan: still a jackass.

Bearing Arms has the facts of the shooting as they stand now.

Shocker: mental illness seems to have played a role in this latest mass shooting.

Shocker, Part II: The CEO of GDSI, the smart gun company, isn’t a gun guy. No, I suspect his passion is using government to force his product down people’s throats whether they want it or not.

Comparing murder rates across countries. If you don’t cherry pick your data, there’s no correlation between gun ownership and homicide rates.

Linking Senator Yee’s voting record to campaign donations. More about Yee from Business Insider. From Reason: Why isn’t Leland Yee a household name? Because he’s a Democrat, and the media hates Republicans.

Hot guns fueling gun violence. But I thought that criminals got their guns from gun shows and the internet?

The Drake case, challenging New Jersey’s no-issue concealed carry policy, has been getting some attention from the press.

New Mexico’s requirement that concealed carry permit applicants be US citizens has been struck down. I’m not even sure you need to reach the Second Amendment on that, since I think it’s well-established that kind of discrimination violates equal protection.

NSSF and SAAMI are suing California over microstamping.

Dave Hardy: “Excuse me while I upchuck.” The Arizona Republic thinks we should celebrate the architect of Fast and Furious. Dave also has an update on the Jones testimony about F&F before Congress.

Claire McCaskill would do well to remember she won her last election by extraordinary luck in drawing a hapless opponent. She’s still a leftist serving in a red state that’s just getting redder. Blasting the NRA and singing Vivek Murthy’s praises won’t endear her. This article is bad advice.

Moms Demand Action speak out against preemption in Florida. Know what their end game is. Preemption is a bedrock principle. Gun ownership basically becomes impossible without great legal jeopardy if local communities can infringe on your rights at will.

College student suspended for questioning the gun control orthodoxy.

How traffic stops should unfold.

Bob Costas: still anti gun. Most of us are far more law-abiding, generally, than your average professional athlete. This isn’t about athletes.

Before the Sturmgewehr. A walk through the pre-history of the assault rifle.

Off Topic:

Charles Koch, the devil himself, defends himself in The Wall Street Journal.

EPA experimenting on children and unsuspecting. If they were a company, and FDA found out about this, the company would be raided and charged with unapproved human trials, which is a crime.

10 thoughts on “Thursday News Links”

  1. McCaskill actually picked her Republican senate opponent by running ads against him in the primary. Her campaign identified him as the weakest general election opponent. There were at least two other serious primary contenders, and Akin won with a whopping 36% of the split vote (no run-offs in MO). McCaskill’s ads mentioning Akin by name were probably the difference, as enough Low Information Republican Voters (LIRV?) picked Akin.

  2. Am I the only one who notices the other aspect of the gun free zones on military bases? This is a gaping hole in our national security. Probably a few thousand Russians/Arabs/Chinese/whoever could get U.S. military uniforms and fake I.D.’s and proceed to wipe out a good portion of our military, with special emphasis on the previously identified most critical members of that military. Do you think Putin doesn’t realize this?

  3. Microstamping is such a transparent gun grab, its amazing its gotten this far.

    How long would it take to remove the firing pin from a Glock and run a file across it? If I was going for speed to make a point, I bet I could do it in 20 seconds with nothing more than the multi-tool on my keychain.

    1. You don’t even need a file. Take the aforementioned Glock and run a few hundred rounds through it.

      The longevity tests show that the firing pin’s repeated impacts (with the primer) eventually pound the micro-engraving down to non-usability very quickly. Investigators might be able to tell if a gun was microstamped, but the imprint is illegible.

      1. All you have to do is look at a firing pin/striker and its obvious how impractical it is. I mean how robust can an engraving on the end of a narrow pin be?

  4. On Bob Costas: He’s asking for positive stories of athletes using firearms, but as you imply, by “athletes” he likely means “professional athletes” (a.k.a. “Exalted Ones”), which as a group are less law-abiding than normal people, let alone the gun-owning population.

    It’s just as weighted of a question as the “random research polls” that say Americans don’t support gun ownership. It’s self-limiting, with the express purpose of skewing the results to support the intended message. Defensive gun use by students of all levels (even high-school) are not uncommon, but for Costas’ “challenge,” scholastic-level athletes will likely not be considered, nor will their coaches, even though the coaches are likely former athletes themselves; you have to know the sport before you can teach it.

    Those who engage in the “shooting sports” need not even apply.

    And proposing to use Google to count up the stories? I hope whatever “independent” entity they get for this is willing to discount hundreds of reports of a “professional athlete” misbehaving (see: Plaxico Burress), and comb the Interwebz for non-professional-athlete stories.

  5. On the EPA: Here is another case of the .gov shooting themselves in the foot. Despite their history of doing similar things in the past, it would be easy to dismiss this one as a loony conspiracy theory, because “that was a long time ago, things have changed, they would never do that now”. except then you remember the NSA spying on everyone, and the IRS targeting TEA party groups, and Project Gunwalker, etc., etc., and you suddenly realize that the .gov going all Mengele on its own citizens is entirely plausible even in this day and age.

    F*** the government.

  6. “Claire McCaskill would do well to remember she won her last election by extraordinary luck in drawing a hapless opponent. She’s still a leftist serving in a red state that’s just getting redder. Blasting the NRA and singing Vivek Murthy’s praises won’t endear her. This article is bad advice”

    Never interrupt your opponents when they are making a mistake. That’s bad form.

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