April 2016 – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Trump Country

Upstate New York was Predictable Trump Country. I knew he was going to win New York, but he did well beyond what I expected. Upstate New York is in worse shape than Pennsylvania in a lot of ways, but I expect Trump will do well here. He does very well with working class people suffering under the blue state model, and Upstate New York fits that bill for sure. The article explains why Pennsylvania will be less receptive to Trump:

But itâ€™s also true that some of these places might yet be resurrected. In fact, some of them already have been. Two hours southeast of Binghamton, across the state line, is Williamsport, Pa., a town that was shrinking for fifty years but is now the seventh fastest-growing metro region in the country. Itâ€™s unemployment rate is below the national average and future job growth there is estimated to be more thanÂ 41 percent over the next decade.

The difference between Binghamton and Williamsport is that New York banned fracking and Pennsylvania welcomed it.

Because New York is controlled politically by New York City, whose residents couldn’t care less about the plight of working class stiffs. Pennsylvania can still outvote it’s large cities, though with coal country in the southwest clearing out population wise, I fear for the future. There are a lot of parts of this state that are in just as bad shape as Upstate New York, and I expect Trump will do very well in these places on Tuesday. Those folks don’t want to hear about what you’ll do to reinvigorate small business, or listen to you talk about how much you love Jesus, or listen to politicians opine about who gets to use what bathroom. They want to know how you’re going to make their lives better, and Republicans better have an answer to that if they don’t want to head the way of the Whigs.

Jackson to be Replaced on $20 Bill

I, for one, approve of replacing racist genocidal Democrats with gun toting Republican women!Â I have to admit that it’s Iowahawk’s Internets. He just allows us to dwell on it:

Breaking: Treasury throws founder of the Democratic Party off $20 bill, replaces with gun-toting Republican pic.twitter.com/G9dVXpTaXv

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 20, 2016

Clayton Cramer, Call Your Office! Left Trying Bellesiles Argument Again

I guess the epic smackdown Michael Bellesiles received at the hands of Clayton Cramer and other in the gun community wasn’t enough. The left is back again with this fraudulent argument, arguing that Americans had no real interest in guns until after the Civil War. In this case, the argument is that Big Corporations made us love guns. I can’t imagine why anyone heading out west on the wagon train might, for perfectly rational reasons, desire themselves a repeating rifle. Yep. Must be slick marketing.

What it boils down to is that this is an election year, and Clinton is determined to get elected on a platform with gun control at the center. Notice Haag, the author, says:

Haag says she began this project determined not to become â€œentrappedâ€ in gun-control politics. â€œI came to this material as an historian,â€ she writes. But she concludes with calls to put the bottom-line gunmaker, rather than the emotionally invested gun owner, at the forefront of the battle over gun violence. She calls for â€œsmart gunâ€ technology, by which a weapon can be used only by its rightful owner. She wants to remove the barriers to research and data collection on gun violence. She calls for additional consumer regulations and protections involving firearms. (â€œA toy gun is subjected to more consumer safeguards as a product than a real gun,â€ Haag writes.) Most important, she urges the repeal of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields manufacturers, distributors and dealers from civil liability for damages caused by their products.

Yes, I do not wish to become “entrapped” in gun control politics. She’s just a poor little innocent historian, after all. So now allow me to regurgitate every talking point from Hillary’s campaign.

NRA has already pointed out some issues with this narrative, but I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Professor Complains about College Students Interest in Shooting

Like most people who support gun control, I figured this article was written by an old white woman, but she seems to be of my generation. The silver lining in this article is that if she’s having to deal with female students exciting about shooting, we’re winning. Winning even though in this case, she questions giving a student a recommendation because the student enjoys shooting:

She seems to be a good kid, Sarah. And I donâ€™t know what she really thinks of gun advocacy and political failures that have cost us all these lives and our sense of safety as educators. I donâ€™t know what she does on the weekends. I also donâ€™t know if she understands emotions, or what real rage feels like. It seems to me no person who has truly experienced the full impact of their own emotions would ever go near a gun.

Sounds like you’re projecting some of your own personal failings onto others there, Professor. I agree, if you’re so emotionally unstable that you worry you’ll hurt others in a fit of rage, don’t own guns. It’s really not for you. She speaks of her mother who got rid of all the guns in the house because her father was manic depressive and had wild mood swings. No one on our side would argue with that. But not everyone is the same way. I’ve never in my life been so angry that I felt like I did not have control, and I’ve been plenty angry. There are millions of other Americans who are the same way.

States United Against Gun Violence Tricks People into Watching a Snuff Film

Sorry, but tricking people into watching a snuff film is pretty ghoulish.Â If I were interviewed afterwards, I’d argue the people who arranged this were sick. It’s not that I am not aware that violence happens, or refuse to face the “consequences” of my beliefs, it’s that I don’t particularly want to watch murderers ply their trade. It’s not the guns that killed those people… it’s the murdering sack of shit behind the trigger. I get that argument has become tired and cliched, but it’s still true.

Weekly Gun News – Edition 33

I think I ended up skipping last week, but I need to clear tabs and get caught up on the news. A lot of people think bloggers spend most of their time writing, but in reality the most time is spent in finding things to write about. When time is really short, like this week, it’s hard to keep up with the rss feed. So let’s pick some good items to link today:

Colorado Senate votes to repeal the magazine ban. It’s onto the House. The GOP marginally controls the Senate, but the Dems still control the house. Last year the Senate passed a repeal bill as well, but it died in the Dem controlled House. If you live in Colorado, call your State Rep and demand a yes vote.

Gun control is on the move in Hawaii.

Joe Huffman discusses Hillary’s plans to get rid of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. To be fair, making gun control the centerpiece of her campaign hasn’t been working out very well for her lately, despite the New York Daily News trying to win a Baghdad Bob award.Â Bernie has circled back to defend his vote in favor of PLCAA.

Now that the North Marianas gun ban was tossed by a federal court, they instituted a $1000 a gun tax instead. If the Dems get the White House, expect to see things like this upheld as they try to narrow Heller and McDonald into meaninglessness.

Another vapid celebrity teams up with Bloomberg. This can’t be good for the Brady Campaign. Vapid celebrities were pretty much all they had left!

I’ve been thinking of removing my Twitter account entirely, and stuff like this is pushing me to make a decision about this. Twitter hardly brings any traffic.

Charles C.W. Cooke takes the time to craft a serious response to Samantha Bee’s mocking of gun owners. I can laugh at myself, and I’ve seen some parodies of gun people that are funny, but Bee’s was not. It was awful, and not funny, and not worth taking seriously in my opinion.

Looks like the Haverford Township Police are deleting critical Facebook posts, regarding their extreme overreaction to someone removing an airsoft AK-47 from a vehicle and taking it into their home. Even if it had been a real AK, the response was incredibly disproportional to what was reported. AK-47s are legal in Pennsylvania. That said, it’s always a good idea to use a case.

Pennsylvanians are buying 97 firearms every hour. I’m sure it’s all the same couple of nuts stocking up their bunkers.

Let’s violate ALL the rules! The results are about as bad as you’d expect.

Clayton has a new paper out studying North Carolina’s permit to purchase law.

The anti-gun folks like to think they are a real grassroots movement when they can use Bloomberg’s money to give a few hundred people a bus ride and box lunch to a protest. These kinds of fundraising dinners happen every week in counties all over the country.

Looks like Constitutional Carry might be coming to Oklahoma.

The Supreme Court is probably the most important issue in a generationÂ this year, but the people want bread and circuses.

Anti-gun Dem rambles on so long she accidentally made a pro-gun bill she opposed better.

Off Topic:

Glenn Reynolds is writing in the WaPo on jury nullification. One of the more important liberty topics, if you ask me. My other obscure, not really on the public radar issue is non-delegation.

Restoring my faith in humanity: people are sharing less of their lives on Facebook. Now if only they would stop using it to promote their kooky and/or ignorant political viewpoints, it might become tolerable for regular usage again. I use it for friends and family, and as an archival repository for family history. I figure in the future there will be digital archeologists using defunct Internet sources. By then all of Facebook’s archives will probably fit on a thumb drive.

Millennials like socialism until they get jobs. Yep. Sucks having to pay for other people’s free shit, don’t it?

Not Good News for Bloomberg

Millennial women seem to care about protecting gun rightsÂ at least as much as abortion, despite having an uncomfortable leaning toward the assault weapons banning kooky socialist from Vermont. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t really matter whether the Millennials don’t have the gun banning fervor of those that came before them. If they care enough about the issue, they’ll vote on it. If they keep voting for people like Hillary and Bernie, they’ll soon find they don’t have any gun rights. How much do they really care then?

Connecticut Ruling Not As Bad as First Feared

Following up on an earlier post today,Â after seeing the opinion onlineÂ and reading it, it’s not as bad as it first appeared. I should have waited. The Court in Connecticut did not reach any decisions on the merits of the PLCAA claim. If I’m reading this correctly, the CourtÂ ruled that the Remington’s et al’s assertion that the court had no jurisdiction over the case was incorrect, and if they wanted to make their claim they would have to do so in a Motion to Strike, rather than a Motion to Dismiss.

PLCAA reads, “A qualified civil liability action may not be brought in any Federal or State court.” The defendants tried to argue that this means the state court had no jurisdiction over the case at all since it’s not a qualified civil liability action. But the judge ruled that many of the defendants claims speak to the legal sufficiency of the plaintiff’s complaint, and if they are going to argue legal sufficiency, they can’t do that in a Motion to Dismiss which argues that the Court in question has no jurisdiction to hear such arguments.

I don’t know Connecticut’s rules, but it would seem that Remington’s attorneys can take another bite of the PLCAA apple without having to go to trial to do it.

Has NRA Finally Decided to Kick Ted Nugent to the Curb?

After years and years of Uncle Ted embarrassing the NRA with his bullshit, a more beautiful sight I can’t imagine beholding:

NoNugent

NRA’s Program Guide to Annual Meeting would seem to be delightfully Nugent free. Taking music to a new level this Â year, apparently without Ted Nugent. I’d like to think this isn’t just a happy coincidence. I hope it isn’t. Jacob has long said if NRA wants Nugent to go away, all NRA had to do was stop paying him to show up. Is it too soon to hope that’s finally happened?

Judge Allows Bushmaster Suit to Move Forward

The lawsuit brought by victims of Sandy Hook families sued Remington arguing that it amounts of negligent entrustment to sell AR-15s to civilians. Really, the correct thing to do in this case by the law is to grant the motion to dismiss, but a judge hasÂ now declined to do that.Â It’s not uncommon for judges to refuse to follow the law when it comes to matters like this, so I am not surprised. Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) generally provides immunity to Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) from suits resulting from the criminal misuse of their products, but it allows exceptions for negligence per se and negligent entrustment. Of course, the idea of selling a legal product to customers could possibly be considered negligent entrustment is a fantastic notion, but probably provided this lawless judge with enough grounds toÂ write an opinion that didn’t sound completely like extending a middle finger to Congress and the rule of law.

In truth we were in trouble when we couldn’t get this case removed to federal court, where judges are less likely to ignore the law this blatantly. Superior Court judges in Connecticut are not elected, but they serve at the whim of the Chief Court Administrator. With Malloy threatening their budget, there might have been the fear that this is a bad time rock the boat andÂ displease the governor. The law is never above politics.