The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Jersey City’s little experiment that their supporters describe as an effort to force all police and military firearms purchases to be based on “the social responsibility of the manufacturer” instead of how well the firearm functions to defend their lives has had the expected impact: significantly higher costs to taxpayers, few companies willing to do any kind of business with them, and no real answers to their gun control questionnaire.
Shocker.
The Supreme Court has finally weighed in on Abramski v. United States today, and it was a 5-4 decision written by Kagan for Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor with Scalia dissenting and joined by Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. If you’re looking for more background documents on the case, here’s the SCOTUSblog page.
Did you know that mass shootings that wouldn’t be resolved by more gun control are simply a messaging problem rather than a failure of the mental health system to get clearly troubled and dangerous people help?
Oh, and the primary reason gun owners don’t trust gun control advocates to stop at background checks is simply because Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA is snooping on everyone instead of the reasons like the fact that they propose banning the most popular types of firearms sold today and the President recently praised other countries for the fact that they confiscated firearms.
These are the reasons that Mark Glaze gave for not getting more gun control passed recently. I guess I should give him credit for acknowledging that many of the mass shootings wouldn’t be stopped by their proposals, but I do find it a little disturbing that those instances, because they don’t fit their political narrative, are really just considered to be messaging problems to gun control advocates instead of an opportunity to discuss how to address mental health issues.
I do also find it amusing that he argues Congress’s debate over the Farm Bill is why none of you readers trust the government to handle gun control. It has nothing to do with the actual proposals by lawmakers that they boast about and submit as legislation.
And none of that distrust on overreach could ever be attributed to Bloomberg’s own allies in the gun control movement who Glaze himself represented. I mean, sure, we found that those allies used their official positions in government to steal charitable gifts given to those in poverty and order the police to round up people they would eventually hold hostage at gunpoint, but it’s all Edward Snowden’s fault for teaching us not to trust government the way that good old Mayor Mike and his gun control buddies need us to in order to get more gun restrictions passed.
It seems that two armed robbers decided they needed more guns and robbed people coming out of a local shooting range (Delaware Valley Sports Center) to get them. Unfortunately, they also shot one of the victims as they were fleeing. Police also say that there was a robbery at another area gun shop the night before.
Be careful and extremely observant, shooters in the Philadelphia area. These people have more guns and ammunition, and they are clearly willing to shoot you if they think they can get more guns off of you.
I will say that this makes the private club Sebastian shoots at more appealing because there’s no easy access without having to closely follow a member in and no easy exit.
I confess that I have not been paying close attention to the Mississippi Senate primary, but now I’m curious to know if any of our readers know why Mike Bloomberg has recently donated $250,000 to keeping Thad Cochran in office. Cochran has the NRA endorsement and is rated A+, so this seems a little counter-intuitive.
My first assumption was that the PAC Bloomberg gave the money to was involved in multiple races around the country, but all I see is pro-Cochran material on their site, so I don’t think that’s the excuse. Any Mississippi voters who are paying close attention want to chime in?
It’s not in doubt that our opponents lie in order to get ahead. To be fair to them, they kind of have to, because the actual truth is not on their side. But despite the media being generally compliant in helping them get their message out in a favorable light, there is such a thing as a lie too big even the media can’t ignore it. It appears that Everytown has crossed that line, forcing CNN to walk back earlier statements from the group.
What we have to hope is that this will make the media and hopefully the public a lot more careful about pronouncements from the group in the future. I don’t think this will be an earth shattering event, where Everytown suddenly gets called on every bit of spin or exaggeration from here on out, but at the very least they know they can’t just outright lie and expect the media to just go along.
There have been a number of outlets covering this. I’d at least say it qualifies as a little egg on their faces.
More wages of Open Carry Texas. Missouri has pretty thorough preemption, but local communities are allowed to ban open carry of firearms:
A southwest Missouri community at the Lake of the Ozarks has banned the open carrying of firearms, even by people who have a conceal-and-carry permit, to avoid frightening off potential tourists.
I don’t know what’s been happening lately to give these folks the idea that people would be frightened off by the open carry if firearms. I doubt they get news from Texas all the way up there in Missouri.
There’s currently a bill sitting on Jay Nixon’s desk that would preempt all of this, but he’s not made it clear whether he’ll sign it. Think what’s going on in Texas is helping with that?
Just so you know where the end game is, this is a campaign in the United Kingdom. Yes, this seems to be serious, and not a parody. Look at the weapons! I see a hammer, a santoku kitchen knife, crossed with a fillet kitchen knife, and a screwdriver. There are not weapons to any normal person who is not half off their rocker. These are unambiguously tools. Are carpenters cowards? Are chefs cowards? Electricians? How does one determine whether someone is carrying a tool for a legitimate purpose or as a weapon? Why would any sane society want to put its people through something like this, having to justify why I might have a hammer, screwdriver, or knife in my car? Why I am carrying a Leatherman? Does anyone in Britain have the guts to tell these people they’ve lost their minds? It’s frankly hard to believe these are the same people who weathered The Blitz and stormed into France at Juneau and Sword.
We were hearing some conflicting reports yesterday on the Stroller Jam that Mom’s Demand Action from Mayors in Everytown (a tip of the hat to Bearing Arms for coming up with that one) had put together, but it seems the truth is that there was one stroller.  I’ve never really studied the physics of stroller traffic, but I’m pretty sure that it takes more than one stroller to cause a “jam.” Other than that, there were a dozen people. You can find their group portrait here.
At my club last night, made a special award presentation to one of our junior shooters, who earned NRA’s Junior Distinguished Expert Award, only the second shooter in our junior program to do so. A total of 35 people came to the meeting. That’s maybe 10 higher than what we run on a typical monthly members meeting, but the point is we’re turning out twice the number MDA is for what is normally the most mundane thing you can think of. We got ten extra people for doing something different this month! When CeaseFirePA organized a protest outside of a local lawmaker’s office, on just a few hours notice we were able to come up with twice the number of people they did.
When will it become apparent to corporations like Target that Shannon Watts is, as they would say in Texas, all hat and no cattle?
From the Texas State Rifle Association:
Last week, Mike Cox and I worked a TSRA booth at the Republican Convention in Fort Worth. During the first two days Republican House members and Senators dropped by to say hello. All commented that the gun-carrying demonstrations are doing more harm than good and not to expect much from the 2015 legislative session.
The complaints were fueled by a demonstration outside the Fort Worth Convention Center plus a handful of delegates who wore black powder handguns into the convention.
As TSRA’s lobbyist, I count votes and I begin counting votes long before bills are even filed. Wouldn’t you?  Every negative comment could be considered a “no vote” on any form of open carry.
There’s a rumor that Target is considering only banning open carry. That will include pistol OCers. Pistol OCers are going to be the biggest losers in all of this, because a concealed carrier’s gun is never going to be detected to prompt the request to leave the premises. And assuming that MDA has no luck getting corporations to post (which has force of law in a number of states), which I wouldn’t bet on if the dam starts breaking in a major way, which it appears it’s about to.
