2014 – Page 35 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Moms Demand Pressures Chipotle Mexican Grill

After some open carry protesters in Texas organized an open carry walk in Victory Park, near American Airlines Stadium in Dallas, Moms Demand took notice. From the organizers of the walk:

For those who want to eat after the walk, there is a Chipotle and an Italian place just down the road that are fine with Open Carry.

Accompanied by a picture, Shannon Watts immediately zeroed in to ChipotleÂ with the hash tag #BurritosNotBullets, and began bullying the company into following in the steps of Jack in the Box and Starbucks, presumably meaning, “Please make some vague statement about guns being icky, and not wanting them in your stores, so we can declare victory.”

But, to their credit, Chipotle isn’t budging so far. I say so farÂ becauseÂ the rifle OCers are doing their level best offer Shannon Watts another victory. This is exactly how OC activists “gave thanks” to Starbucks, and burned us. It wasn’t just in their stores, but all over social media as well. These companies don’t want their brands associated with open carry, gun rights, anti-gun hysteria, or gun control. Chipotle just wants to sell burritos and not be inserted into a contentious debate, just like Jack-in-the-Box wanted to sell burgers, and just like Starbucks just wanted to sell coffee. The problem is, many on “our side” don’t leave well enough alone, and keep taking actions that ignorantly draw the company further into a debate they want no part of.

Bitter and I went today and were sure to float a tweet that corporate would notice. I wore an NRA polo with a nice pair of khakis, but not AR-15. My pistol was concealed. The way to show Chipotle appreciation is to spend money there, and quietly let corporate know you did and why. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending them a tweet or two either (given that Chipotle markets organic, local food, to the kind of people who like that sort of thing, I couldn’t resist this tweet). But that’s going to be about the extent of our activism on this. I think we need to be very wary of attaching their brand to our cause.

Any reasonably high-profile company is well-acquainted with astroturf activist groups like Watts’s. That’s why they usually have the right instincts out of the gate in terms of telling them to get lost. Let us hope that Chipotle continues to stay out of the debate, but if they are to succeed in doing that, we have to let them out. If we show our “appreciation” by taking ARs and shotguns into their establishments, I think they will likely cave into Moms Demand, not because they really want to, but because they just want their branding nightmare to end.

Quick Thought on Substantial Burden Analysis

Professor Eugene Volokh is famously known for liking substantial burden analysis when it comes to the Second Amendment, particularly when it comes to deciding the constitutionality of magazine bans.

I came across an interesting statistic this morning that got me thinking. According to a Pew Poll released earlier in the year, the typical American reads five books a year, just like a typical self-defense shooting only involves two shots. For the sake of argument, it would not be too substantial a burden on a person’s First Amendment right to limit the number of books Americans can buy in one year to twenty-five books.

We could take this substantial burden analysis a step further, and suggest that since the average person learns to read and write at about age seven, and the average person lives until approximately 78 years of age, it would be hardly a substantial burden on a person’s First Amendment right to limit the size of private library to 1775 books. No person may own more than 1775 books.

And why would this not be constitutional? After all, it’s possible to limit magazine sizes to ten rounds, and the consequence if someone runs out of ammunition during a violent attack are far more severe than a person just not being able to buy as many books as they would like, or have large libraries of books at their private residences. Running out of books is surely a lesser problem than running out of ammunition at a critical juncture!

UPDATE: One might argue there’s no governmental interest, but suppose it’s saving trees? You can have as many e-books as you want, but you’re strictly limited in paper books. The surplus books can be recycled and put back in to supply existing paper needs.

Winning the Culture

Apparently the pearl clutchers in Chicago are having a fit about fashion designers acknowledging the new zeitgeist in Chicago:

Bartuch spoke with Yahoo Shine about her involvement in the recent Firearms & Fashion Show in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. “Myself and my business partner [Marilyn Smolenski, who owns Chicago-based online retailerÂ Nickel and Lace] joined forces to educate and empower women about self protection in general â€” not just guns, although we prefer those,â€ she tells Yahoo Shine.

This is why it is very important to free these cities. I want the anti-gun people in Chicago to have to deal with this. I want them to be confronted with the reality of a diverse and free culture every time they read the paper or open their eyes. This is not something they’ve ever had to deal with. They’ve been able to maintain confidence that Chicago is more enlightened, and doesn’t cater to those kinds of people. That’s now over. They have to deal with us.

It’s also not just Chicago. Check out this video from Western Michigan

A survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found 1 in 4 American women now own a gun–up 77 percent in the last seven years. “At Silver Bullet Firearms in Wyoming, more than half the students signing up for pistol orientation classes are female.

While at the same time, our opponents tell us gun ownership is in decline, and gun culture on the wane. Let them keep denying reality. Let them continue to live in worlds of their own making. What’s slowly happening is probably the worst thing the gun control folks could fear. They’ve been wrong for a long time, but what’s happening to them now is arguably worse. They are becoming fundamentally uncool. They can keep making their mistakes and clutching their pearls, and we’ll keep on winning the culture.

The Consequences of the Colorado Ban on Non-FFL Transfers

Charles C.W. Cooke relays a story of a Colorado woman who had a firearm taken by police after she was involved in a serious car accident. So far so good, I would hope if I’m involved in a bad car accident the police would take care to secure the firearm so I could retrieve it at a later date. But that part ended up being the problem. Given that Colorado law doesn’t make any exception for someone picking a firearm up from police custody, the police weren’t sure how to go about it, so they just kept the gun.

Remember that this crap about Universal Background Checks has nothing at all to do with background checks. It’s about making gun ownership complex and risky, and trapping unwitting gun owners like this woman. The police can easily run a check on her to ensure she’s not a prohibited person. In fact, they probably did this early on. But yet they can’t return the gun to her easily because the law is stupid and incomprehensible, and was written by people who didn’t care what kind of burden they were forcing on ordinary Americans.

This woman didn’t know they had passed these laws, but once she found out, she got angry, and got active. I keep saying this 90% figure is completely bogus. People will tell pollsters anything they think sounds good. When you explain what the actual consequences of the law will be, people suddenly stop supporting it.

I’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday for Some News Links Today

The media cycle on the issue is getting a bit slow, as happens sometimes. I try not to do too much in the way of filler on this blog, so if I don’t have stories to comment on, I just don’t have as many posts. But I think I may have some news links to share. Sometimes I don’t know until I go through the tabs and see:

General Gun News:

17 year old girl beats an incumbent State Delegate in West Virginia. She ran on the Second Amendment.

Also from Bob Owens: “The Long, Slow Death Of The Gun Control Cult”

How about that: it turns out gun trafficking is illegal after all. What the gun control folks and the feds want to do is make it a strict liability felony, with no mens rea requirement.

What exactly is GDSI up to? Looks like trying to buy some pro-gun street creds. I believe they are very dangerous.

Why does the USDA need a SWAT team? Mad cows! Mad cows!

Looks like things could be heating up again in Illinois.

Tam: Logic is Dead.

SAF wins a victory in Arkansas, getting their law denying legal residents thrown out as unconstitutional. Non-citizens have Second Amendment rights too.

Personally, I’m kind of happy to see more anti-gun folks at least acknowledging the Second Amendment as a barrier.

Josh Prince has more to say about Kathy Kane’s recent action on Utah reciprocity. He’s looking to run a case, but needs funding.

Idiocy in the Media:

What the Bergen Record doesn’t want to accept is that New Jersey has forever ruined any chance at smart guns coming to market.Â New Jersey can repeal their law, but we’re not stupid enough to believe they won’t just pass another mandate when they feel the timing is right. Smart gun technology therefore is to be continually opposed.

Idiocy With Guns:

There’s a difference between a flak jacket and modern Kevlar body armor, and I still wouldn’t test either by having someone shoot me.

The rules, they are for the little people.

Those Silly Anti-Gunners:

More anti-gunners show their own hypocrisy with armed bodyguards.

Why are anti-gunners so plagiaristic? (Thanks to John Richardson for pointing that out after the article about Sari’s pearl clutching over 80% lowers)

She can keep quoting Gandhi, but personally, I’m still in the “laughing at you” stage.

As far as I’m concerned, without a police report, I don’t believe it happened. I know there is ugliness on our side of the issue, just like on their side of the issue. We should speak out against that. But if someone spits on you, you should call the cops over. They’re also ignoring the good number of women who show up who get nasty, because that would interfere with the War on Women narrative, wouldn’t it?

Off Topic:

The Last Communist City, by Michael J. Totten.

The Gospel according to snark.

Machine Gun Free-For-All?

If only it could be true! Attorney Josh Prince makes a strong case the ATF made a major error: “Did ATFâ€™s Determination on NICS Checks Open the Door for Manufacture of New Machineguns forÂ Trusts?” They decided to redefine “person” to exclude non-incoprporated trusts. But if a non-incorporated trust isn’t a “person,” then does 922(0), which says “it shall be unlawful for any person to transfer or possess a machinegun” not manufactured before May 19, 1986, apply to non-incorporated trusts? I’d imagine that it would be a cold day in hell before a court grants us a machine gun free-for-all, but it certainly calls into question ATF’s determination about trusts, doesn’t it?

San Diego in Peruta: OK With AG Intervention, Not Moot

Yesterday, San Diego County filed a response with the 9th Circuit Court of appeals to the Motions to Intervene by the California Attorney General, and whether the case was moot. They are fine with the intervention of the State AG, and argue the case is not moot, since they are still sitting on applications awaiting a final decision. You may recall a few weeks ago there was some argument over whether or not Peruta was moot, in which case RichardsÂ v. Prieto would be the case to go forward, so this should settle that issue in favor of Peruta not being moot. At this point, I’m not even sure what outcome to hope for anymore, because in one sense, I’d like to give the Supreme Court another bite at the apple, exceptÂ I’m not sure they’ll take it, so part of me feels we’re better off with this not going en banc.

How Things Have Changed

Kevin Baker’s “The Smallest Minority” was one of the blogs I’ve read since before I was blogging, a short list that also includes Jeff Soyer and Say Uncle. Many more have come and gone, like, well, Bitter’s old blog, whose archives we just recently restored after the Russians made off with her domain a few years ago (first it was thebitchgirls.us, and then Crimea. Where will it stop?) I was sad but not surprised to see Kevin announce he was semi-retiring. Most of us that have been doing this a while understand. It’s easy to get burnt out constantly having to follow things in order to have something to write about.

This blog has gone 7 years, and after a while, you do a post, and feel like a broken record repeating what you know you said back in 2010, and probably in 2008 before that. Having spent 7 years following every stupid thing media reporters have said, there’s hardly anything that’s new anymore. Our opponents in the gun control movement haven’t had a new idea since the 1990s. Despite the Bloomberg outfit’s new energy for gun control, nothing they are trying is something we haven’t seen before. Moms Demanding Action? I know I’ve seen this before. Oh yeah:

Happy Mother’s Day to our SUPER MOMS! We can’t tell you how much we appreciate your passion & activism! THANK YOU! http://t.co/DfHBS8J18e

â€” Brady Campaign (@bradybuzz) May 11, 2014

And take a look at that crowd. It was never a million moms, but it’s impressive. Do you think the Bloomberg gun-control organizations could accomplish something like that today? That’s how much the issue has changed in 14 years. I feel like eventually all the blogs I started with will be gone. A lot has changed in blogging too. I wish Kevin Baker the best in spending time on real life. I’m sure it will be enjoyable. I’m still going to hang in there for now, but I won’t be blogging forever.

A Bit More on Smart Guns

Bob Owens has an excellent open letter to an ignorant reporter about Smart Guns over at Bearing Arms. I hate to specifically single Bob out for this, because I’ve heard it a lot, but I want to put my engineer hat on for a second and comment on this one bit:

I explained that the technology used in the [Armatix iP1] pistol is so fragile that anything stronger than chambering anything more a low-recoiling .22LR would shake the gunâ€™s electronic brains apart in short order.

There’s actually no fundamental reason you can’t make electronics that can stand up to the shock of a firing pistol and make them reasonably cheaply. After all, a laser and its driver areÂ electronic components, and they stand up just fine. If we can put GPS guidance into artillery shells, we can make reasonably priced electronic components that can stand up to the shock of small arms recoil. I suspect the reason the Armatix is a .22 is that it was designed by Europeans who don’t think of self-defense as the primary reason for gun ownership. It’s also much easier to design a .22LR chambered pistol than a more substantial caliber, where you move away from simple blowback operation. I suspect Armatix don’t have a lot of institutional experience with firearms design.

The problem with smart guns are more fundamental than the shock sensitivity of electronics, and have more to do with the limits of biometric identification and radio frequency identification (RFID). The former is unreliable and slow, and the latter is prone to interference and jamming. There’s also inherent mechanical problems with the smart gun that make the technology very easy for a determined individual to defeat. I had a conversation with some of our opponents on this topic, who argued that automobile anti-theft systems became much more sophisticated, but aside from misunderstanding the problem, I thought it was a reasonable point.

But while it’s true you can’t just hot wire a car these days, the reason you can’t is because automobiles today all have electronic ignitions. In order to make a smart gun that is not easily defeated, guns would also need evolve away from chemo-mechanical ignition to electronic ignition. Now, manufacturers have done electronic ignition firearms, but they haven’t exactly torn up the market. I don’t believe Remington even makes the Etronx line of 700s anymore, and the idea can charitably be called a market failure. It was, to borrow a phrase from Tam, an answer to a question that nobody asked. The Etronx 700s take a specialized and expensive primer, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know how susceptible those primers are to electrostatic discharge before I would trust them in a self-defense gun. I’ve also read that the Etronx ignition systemÂ wasÂ not a paragon of reliability.

But even with electronic ignition, you just move from a simple mechanical hack to aÂ firmware hack to disable the smart features. The difference between a gun and a car is that a thief can’t easily take the car with him to fiddle with the security features. A car thief has to be able to act before someone notices, whereas a gun thief has all the time in the world. Hacking automotive firmware is a hobby among car enthusiasts these days, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t be so for guns.

Additionally, when it comes to electronic-ignition firearms, I’m sure our opponents would positively love semi-automatic firearms that could be converted to fully automatic with a firmware hack, which would beg the question as to whether semi-automatics with electronic ignition were “readily convertible” and thus Title II firearms out of the gate. It would certainly be a novel theory that could be used to prosecute some unlucky bastard. If you’re going to make a smart electronic ignition system, then certainly detecting an out-of-battery condition is an obvious safety feature. You can see how this then becomes very easy.

The antis really have no idea what kind of can of worms they are opening. They don’t much care because their interest in smart guns only goes as far as making guns more difficult and expensive to own, while simultaneously lowering the valueÂ proposition of gun ownership. If the technology actually worked, you’d quickly see interest disappear as it became apparent it was not only easy to circumvent, but could open a whole world of new possibilities for people intent on disregarding the law.

NBC Sports Not Doing Well After Canceling Firearms Programming

Many of you may remember that in the wake of Sandy Hook, NBC Sports (which I would note is owned by Comcast who have very close ties to the White House) cancelled 3-Gun Nation and any other firearms programming. Exurban Kevin takes a look at how that move has worked out for NBC Sports. Apparently they replaced the gun shows with soccer, and it’s not going well. Score one for gun moms over soccer moms!

The best thing we can do to help our cause is to just tune out. Stop watching the crap companies like Comcast spew. Meanwhile, Republicans would do well to understand that the Cable TV magnates are not friends, and should work to deregulate their market and open it up to competition.