Sebastian – Page 143 – Shall Not Be Questioned

ATF Director Badmouthing Rifle Ammunition

ATF B. Todd Jones would seem to indicate he’s not just concerned about M855:

In a Senate Appropriations CommitteeÂ hearing, ATF Director B. Todd Jones said all types of the 5.56 military-style ammo used by shooters pose a threat to police as more people buy the AR-15-style pistols.

“Any 5.56 round” is “a challenge for officer safety,” he said. Jones asked lawmakers to help in a review of a 1986 bill written to protect police from so-called “cop killer” rounds that largely exempted rifle ammo like the 5.56 because it has been used by target shooters, not criminals.

They’ve been trying to use this issue as a backdoor gun ban since I was in elementary school, as a way to ban all rifle ammunition. Here’s my concern: I hadn’t realized Jones was scheduled to appear in a budgetary hearing a few days after announcing he was backing off. What’s to prevent Jones from putting the M855 ban back on the table once he gets his agency’s budget approved? I think we need some protections in there to ensure he’s not just playing games for the sake of his agency’s budget.

Excellent Graphic for Suppressors

There is currently an effort in Minnesota to get suppressors legalized. Minnesota is one of only of eleven states where they are illegal, and Minnesota Gun Owners PAC is working to change that. I really like the fact sheet they made up on the issue. This is excellent:

This gets the message across in a very clear way. If you look at the growth in this issue, I think we may have a decent shot of getting suppressors out from under the National Firearms Act if we can keep the trend going.

Why Are Anti-Gun People so Violent?

Case in point:

Dronestrike

These people go around insulting gun owners all day, and then complain when some people get nasty back. There’s an old saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Something we should keep in mind on our side as we move this issue forward.

UPDATE: More here.

CSGV Bites off More Than They Could Chew

I’ll channel Miguel here a bit by highlighting some of the crazy things our opponents say and do. Our opponents in the gun control movement often believe they are dealing with a small number of loudmouth activists. Most days of the week that’s true, because to be honest, your average gun owner has better things to do than debate anti-gun activists on the Internet. But every once in a while, groups like CSGV will trip over themselves and discover just how much depth there is to an issue. In this case, they picked on Kyle Lamb:

Then, hilarity ensued. The kind of hilarity that can only come by watching people trip over all their prejudices and preconceptions:

AlreadyBeenThere

Yeah, real armchair warrior, that Kyle Lamb guy.

DouchCanoe

All of our people are just playing army. There’s no way it’s possible that many of the people on our side were actually in it.

CantMeasureUp

Yeah, it’s a well known fact that Delta Force are a bunch of pushovers.

InPrison

They are very tolerant people, who just want to have a discussion about commons sense laws!

Wannabees

Yeah, well known fact we’re all latent murderers.

Respect

That’s respecting the man’s service, right there. He is done with his infantile service, so now he needs to put his soldier toys away and grow up!

The intern at CSGV will no doubt be spending all his time today deleting comments in the attempt to keep up the narrative that they are really open to debate, and gun owners are just too stupid to have anything to say about it. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that CSGV, and the folks who follow them, are anything other than horrible, derangedÂ human beings.

No Tolerance for Anti-Gun Republicans!

If I were a resident of Charleston, West Virginia, I’d vote for the Democrat, even if the only purpose was to get the incumbent mayor out of office:

Tuesday News Links 03-10-2015

Time to clear the tabs again:

Clayton Cramer: Gun control laws don’t create safety, only illusions. The fight for Constitutional Carry in Idaho is still hot.

They see me trollin’, they hatin’. Never occurs to them that the reason people do this is because it baits people on the other side into revealing what petty hand wringers and rabid busybodies they are for all to see. Plus, look at all the sickos who think the picture is sexual? And they think we’re disturbed?

Josh Prince: Did AG Kane fail in her statutory duties regarding reciprocity?Â She’s not going to prosecute herself, though.

Is your Congress critter on the listÂ of reps who signed the M855 letter to ATF? Mine isn’t. The only member of the PA Republican congressional delegation to not sign on. That’s because he’s not running again in 2016, and he’sÂ never really been with us. Even Pat Meehan signed it!

USA Today: “Giffords draws crowd at D.C. event to support gun control” Pictures or it didn’t happen.

Google has already done a lot to destroy blogging, but this may actually kill it off for good.

From the land of Brady Board member Joan Peterson: “More Minnesotans have handgun carrying permits than ever before.” Minnesota’s murder rate is typically at European levels.

The Fourth Amendment is dead. Hey, it’s fine as long as “theyâ€™ve been regulated for centuries.”

Walker supports ending Wisconsin’s waiting period. Worth remembering that our last Republican President won office saying he supported banning assault weapons. This is a welcome change.

Joe Huffman takes a look at polling on guns in the home.

Remember, gun control people tell us that it’s very important for gun owners to be well-trained, and then turn around and mock and oppose training.

Florida Carry countering Bloomberg’s astroturfing.

Mance v. Holder stay denied by judge.

Iowa considering legalizing suppressors.

Pat Toomey makes the list of most vulnerable Senators in 2016. How’s that gun control working out for ya Pat?

I’m happy to see Justice Thomas embracing non-delegation doctrine reform. I think this has been a much greater problem for traditional American liberty than the expansion of the commerce power.

And so it begins: handwringing and hysterics from the media over national reciprocity.

ATF Waves the White Flag (For Now)

NRA-ILA is announcing ATF is waving the white flag of surrender, for the time being.

The announcement that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) will suspend its proposed framework to ban M855 ammunition validates the NRAâ€™s assertion that this effort was nothing more than a political maneuver to bypass Congress and impose gun control on the American people.

I think we can all pat ourselves on the back here. Gun owners seem to be more effective at standing up to the Obama Administration than the GOP. Punch back twice as hard.

Continue to Comment on M855 Ban

Friday, people were e-mailing me about the M855 issue that the ATF had removed the language about the M855 exception from its 2015 Published Ordinances. I will say that a lot of people in the media, including the gun media, got details wrong. ATF is now claiming it was just a mistake. First, the Published Ordinances are not actual law. How ATF makes actual law, at least in this case, is defined by the Administrative Procedure Act. Now, it may well be that the comment period is a sham, and the ATF plans to implement the ban anyway. In fact, that would seem certain.

But that’s NOT to say it means it’s pointless to submit a public comment, which closes on March 16. I’m planning to ask whether I can submit one on behalf of my local club as legislative chair. The law spells out what ATF must do. Yours might raise an important issue that ATF fails to address that could get the regulation invalidated. There’s never a point where you should assume the fix is in and not keep playing the game. Make their defiance of the law grossly apparent to any judge who they end up before.

Magazine Ban Upheld in 9th Circuit

I’m a little late on this news, because I had originally wanted to read the opinion, but I did not end up finding the time.Â The magazine restrictions by Sunnyvale, California were upheld in the 9th circuit last week. All these stories are basically the same: a lot of judges hate the Heller decision, because they don’t particularly like the Second Amendment, so they will use any reasoning they can to gut it.

While this case will no doubt be appealed, I’m not certain if I feel comfortable taking a magazine case to the Supreme Court, for fear it’ll lose. I’d rather get more case law first, and at least get lower courts out of the mindset of open resistance to the will of the Supreme Court on the Second Amendment.

Media Finally Noticing “Lost & Stolen” is a Sham

I congratulate Christine Vendel of PennLive for finally noticing something we’ve been screaming about for quite some time:Â that all towns claiming the sky was falling, and they needed a “lost and stolen” law to combat illegal firearmsÂ trafficking, were completely full of shit.Â The article acknowledges there isÂ no enforcement, which we’ve also been blowing the whistle on to no avail.

This was never the problem our opponents claimed it to be, and now they are incredulously claiming, “It’s not measured by the number of fines. It’s measured by compliance.” So everyone who’s trafficking guns to criminals is just magically obeying the new law? This so laughably lacks credibility, it’s hard to believe they would even try to throw that turd at the wall.

This was never about stopping illegal trafficking.Â The goal was to weaken state preemption by pushing a non-issue that would easily pass in a number of towns. It was preemption they were after. So how did it work out for them?

The end result is Act 192, which strengthened the preemption law.