Month: April 2018

Bank of America Caves

The next domino has fallen:

On Tuesday, Finucane said, “We have had intense conversations over the last few months. And it’s our intention not to finance these military-style firearms for civilian use.” She said the reaction has been mixed.

“These are clients we have enjoyed a relationship with,” she said. “There are those I think will reduce their portfolios and we’ll work with them and others that will choose to do something else.”

The amount of damage Bank of America and Citi can do pales in the amount of damage already done to the US Firearms business by Cerberus Capital via Remington Outdoors. The gun business is better off as a highly distributed cottage industry, and I suspect with changes in technology, that’s where it’ll be headed. Such an industry is going to be less vulnerable to pressure from big banks and the financial industry.

Personally, I think the banks need to be broken up. Both Citi and Bank of Americans eagerly lapped up trillions of our tax dollars. Never again. Break them up.

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Teachers Union Threatens Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo has, so far, resisted a tremendous amount of pressure from these left-aligned groups to stop doing business with the NRA and legal gun manufacturers and sellers. A major national Teachers Union is now threatening to end a mortgage program with Wells Fargo, or else.

“We’re issuing Wells Fargo an ultimatum—they can have a mortgage market that includes America’s teachers, or they can continue to do business with the NRA and gun manufacturers,” Weingarten said in the statement. “They can’t do both.”

Hopefully 20,000 mortgages isn’t a huge amount of money for a bank as large as Wells Fargo. I bank with Wells Fargo, having started with Core States Bank, and then gone through all the mergers over the years. I will send them a note saying that I appreciate them staying out of this political battle and not caving to pressure to take a position in the gun debate.

I really don’t get this new fad of people needing the companies they do business with to affirm their politics. I mean, if you’re selling fair trade coffee, I think it’s reasonable to expect that the brand would promote the idea of fair trade. Or if you’re selling guns, the business would promote the idea of gun rights. Some products are lifestyle products, and you can’t get around that. But banking and financial services are not among those. I don’t need my beliefs on, say, the non-delegation doctrine affirmed by my bank when I make a deposit. I don’t need a lecture about Big Ag when I go to buy a burrito. Personally, if you think that way, you probably need to get a life.

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The Gift that Won’t Stop Giving

Ted Nugent, firm believer that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, is at it again.

I could go onto a rant about why the hell is this guy still getting nominated to the Board (I get he could run by petition and win, but why endorse it?). The only way we can expand our political power is to grow the tent. Some questions for people to discuss in the comments:

  1. Is Nugent helping keep the tent full, or is he driving more people away from it?
    Does the nonsense spewing from his maw actually accomplish something for us, and if so what?
  2. Does this kind of rhetoric bring in support from places we need it? Not all new NRA members are created equal. I’d rather have ten new NRA members where I live, in Northern Virginia, or in Columbus, Ohio than have 100 new NRA members in rural Oklahoma.
  3. The reason Nugent’s inane commentary gets amplified is because it gins up our opponents base and hardens their soft supporters. The other side has a bigger amplifier than we do. Does that mean we need to police our kooks harder than the other side needs to police theirs?

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An Idea So Crazy, It Just Might Work

Glenn Reynolds in USA Today: “Looking for ‘solutions’ to mass killings? Start with punishing failure.“:

Since then, we’ve had a lot of what the father of genuine hero Borges, according to the family’s lawyer, calls “bubblegum hero stuff.” But there’s been no accountability for the adults whose incompetence, or worse, made this slaughter possible. And, as with the earlier examples above, that’s par for the course. Over and over again, when the government fails, there are no consequences for those overseeing the failing.

No. When they screw up, we pay. Accountability for thee but not for me. Glenn Reynolds has spoken out against qualified immunity repeatedly. I read this weekend about the idea that absent qualified immunity, officers would have to carry insurance, like doctors do. Or more likely their departments would carry insurance for them. This would give better incentives for agencies to weed out bad cops. Sounds feasible to me. But would it work in practice? Does malpractice insurance weed out bad doctors?

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You’ll Be Shocked, I Know

YouTube shooter evaded California’s magazine ban:

She fired a total of 20 rounds, apparently killing herself with the last round. In this case, poor marksmanship did more to keep the number of dead and injured low than California’s gun laws. Magazine limitations hurt defenders more than offenders. Attackers have the advantage of planning ahead, and can bring reloads with them. They aren’t likely to be concerned with discomfort. My jacket right now would hold 8 to 10 spare magazines. I could probably fit three or four extra in a pair of Khakis. But I’m not going to do that as a defender, because it’s uncomfortable and heavy.

I don’t want clueless politicians artificially limiting the magazine capacity of my pistol for the same reason the cops don’t: I don’t get to pick and choose where and under what circumstances I might need a gun. An attacker does.

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Financial Pressure Being Put on Other Banks and Processors

Bloomberg had a plant at Citi, so that’s how they caved so quickly, but pressure is being put on other gun businesses:

The [New York State] pension, third largest in the U.S., contacted the chief executives of nine financial institutions including Mastercard Inc., Visa Inc., American Express Co., Discover Financial Services, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., First Data Corp. and Worldpay Inc., asking them to assess risks and explore the cost of implementing systems that could reject purchases of firearms, ammunition or accessories.

I can’t think of what public safety impact is going to be had from driving gun businesses to use cash, which will diminish traceability. Think about it: some schmuck buys a gun and later uses it to murder his wife, if he pays for it with a card the cops will know where it was bought as soon as they pull his credit card records. If it’s cash, they actually have to trace the gun, assuming they even have it. We’re constantly told that Law Enforcement needs more tracing resources, and this would be removing one. So what’s the public safety function of this? I ask this as a rhetorical question, because we all know the answer. As Glenn Reynolds is fond of observing: “It’s got nothing to do with safety. It’s all about humiliating the flyover rubes and showing them who’s boss.”

It’s also about acting, which forces us to react. PLCAA was such a reaction, and it immediately rocketed up to the top of NRA’s priorities. It was the major legislative achievement we got out of the Bush Administration. How would you like the major legislative achievement of the Trump Administration be a bill that doesn’t allow the financial industry to discriminate against federal firearms licensees, instead of SHARE or National Reciprocity? I can promise that Bloomberg would love it.

Actually, I think there are other options: such as a lawsuit under 42 U.S. Code § 1985(3). Ordinarily, Carpenters v. Scott would be a problem here, which held that 1985(3) did not apply to First Amendment cases where the state was not involved. But this would not be a First Amendment case, and with the involvement of the New York State Pension Fund, the state now is involved. It’s a long shot, but I’d still try it, if only to make some of these people burn money on lawyers.

There’s also tortious interference with contract, which Dave Hardy has talked about some. I don’t agree such laws should be applicable to boycott organizers, but a state pension fund using their market power as a form of intimidation to interfere with and harm another’s lawful business is a textbook case. I’d grab that chair in this bar fight.

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What More Do They Want?

I’ve argued with several people that, say we agreed to give up our AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles, the next time there was a public mass shooting, would they and all the other pro-gun control folks throw up their hands, “Well, you know, we tried. But we’ve done enough,” and eschew any further gun control? I don’t know anyone who believes that the case. They certainly know that’s not the case.

And proof positive, I give you the reaction to the YouTube shooting in California.

What more do you want in California, seriously? They have everything you could dream of federally and more. But it’s apparently not enough. That should tell you everything you need to know.

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World’s Smallest Violin, Right Here

It’s a shame, because I agree that turning schools into prisons as a solution to mass shootings is wrong, just like I think banning the killer’s gun is wrong. But the irony here is delicious. Sucks having to pay for the actions of a madman doesn’t it? So maybe now you know what it feels like to be a gun owner, and have people repeatedly trying to limit your personal freedom at any excuse they can find.

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Regulatory Path for Bump Stock Ban

A very informative article over at The Hill for how ATF is to proceed with this, from someone who understands administrative law. As I noted when all this started, ATF uses does this stuff by policy with determination letters. If this goes through, it will be a regulation, which is harder to change. There is a whole rule making process, which this article describes.

I’m told by people in the know that a bump stock ban was coming one way or another. It was just a question of whether or not it would be a narrowly tailored ban, or a broad ban that put all semi-automatic firearms at legal risk. I personally do not wish to see what a hostile administration could do with a law that works according to “rates of fire.” As I’ve learned debating people on this, “rapid fire” is whatever rate of fire the person arguing with you is uncomfortable with.

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