Author: Sebastian

Good Question

Armed Canadian asks a good question:

“State Delegate Bill Bronrott of Montgomery County says it may be time to get those bikes off the roads.

“They are potential death machines in the wrong hands,” says Bronrott. “And I think we should look at the possibility of saying these should be used on race courses rather than public highways.”

Not that seriously expect anything to happen as a result of this but I need to ask a simple question of anyone who thinks like this…

Why do you feel the need to see every single tragedy as a problem that needs fixing, some kind of moral crusade or to not hold the person who caused it responsible and rather blame the item used?

So the next time you say “Well, we don’t ban cars because people use them irresponsibly, and they kill far more people every year than guns.” maybe you should think twice before you give the politicians another bad idea.

I’ve always thought that gun control is a litmus test for how liberty minded a politician is.  Let’s see what Delegate Bill Brainrot thinks about other issues:

Delegate Bronrott earned a 100% perfect score from the Humane Society of the United States in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Just in case you don’t know, the HSUSA is against hunting.  What about guns?

Good Morning. Welcome. I am Bill Bronrott, a State Delegate in the Maryland General Assembly from here in Bethesda, and chair of the Montgomery House Delegation’s Democratic Caucus. We are here to issue our own Homeland Security High Alert because the clock is quickly running out on the 10 year ban on the sale of assault weapons in our country.

Remember, they aren’t just anti-gun, they are anti-freedom.   I might start taking progressives more seriously when they wake up and realize there is more to freedom than abortion, social justice (whatever the hell that means), gay rights, and hating George W. Bush.  I’ll start being impressed when they stand up for liberty in general, whether you’re a favored constituency or not.

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Jack The Dripper Out

I’ve always believed that if a person wants to off themselves, that’s their right as a free individual. It’s one reason using gun control to prevent suicide is particularly unpersuasive to me even if it actually worked.

But Jack Kevorkian has always given me the creeps, and now he’s out of prison. If someone out there is in pain and wants to off themselves, be a man (or woman) and do it yourself. Please, for the rest of us, keep this goof out of the media.

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The Importance of Civility

We linked yesterday to a blog in this post.  Well, it looks like he’s changed his tune.  This is a good example of what civil dialog can bring, when we are armed with facts and treat our opponents as reasonable people.   Real good work on the part of my readers.

It’s rare that someone actually is willing to admit defeat, and I admire someone who can admit that maybe they didn’t know as much as they thought they did.  Most of the time, we may not change minds.  But it’s important to have the dialog.  This is how you keep a republic healthy, and advance the political debate.

I wish I could take credit for most of the dude’s traffic, but SayUncle and Jeff Soyer had a lot to do with it too :)

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Changes Coming to 4473

I just got this in the mail from the ATF.

To assist you and your customers to better understand this provision, ATF is clarifying the Firearms Transaction Record (ATF Form 4473), to make it clear, for example, that any person who has been found by a court, board or other lawful authority to be a danger to self or others is prohibited from purchasing a firearm or ammunition. We will provide you with additional information about this change in the Form 4473 in the near future.

It seems like every time I’ve bought a gun I fill out a different version of 4473.  As a Cruffler, I don’t deal with 4473 for C&R transactions, but they still have to be filled out when buying non-C&R firearms.

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We Call Them Shades

I will admit, when it comes to private sector action, I’m not a big privacy advocate.  I don’t really care if my supermarket chain knows what brand of toothpaste I prefer, or how often I buy paper towels.  I also don’t get how Google’s new street zoom features is violating anyone’s privacy.  When you’re in a public place, you’re in a public place.   And as for this:

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.

“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”

I have a novel and innovative new technology for dealing with this issue.  I call them blinds.

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Self-Defense advise…

… against the undead. From the Federal Vampire Zombie Agency:

Shotguns are somewhat less effective against zombies because of the zombie’s primitive mental capacity and enormous pain tolerance. As with any zombie weapon, you should use the shotgun only to buy enough time for escape.

Or if a rifle is more your style:

Vampires: FVZA sharpshooters used rifles with night vision scopes to pick off vampires as they emerged from their shelter for a night of hunting. But for home defense against bloodsuckers, the rifle is not very practical.

Zombies: When the zombies are coming, a rifle from a fortified, elevated position is just about the best weapon there is. There’s no danger of catching zombie fluids and viscera in the eyes, nose and mouth, and no danger of a zombie grabbing the barrel of the rifle. Picking off zombies from a safe spot can even be, dare I say, more than a little fun.

There are a few things that are surprising, like the fact that crossbows are not particularly effective against vampires, and that the flamethrower has a long and distinguished history in undead combat.

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The Importance of Culture

Yesterday’s post about about how I got into this issue was getting a bit long, but I did want to touch on the importance of a healthy shooting culture. It’s occurred to me that if I had been raised in New Jersey, while I rather doubt I would have had the personality and upbringing to be in favor of gun control, it’s doubtful I would be involved in shooting or in the gun rights issue in the same way I am now.

The first step in any gun control campaign has to first involve destroying the hunting and shooting culture that exists in that state. New Jersey started on that path in 1968, when it became one of the only states in the nation to require gun owners to be licensed. By the 90s, New Jersey’s shooting community was on life support, and ripe for attack. Under Florio you got the scary semi-auto ban. Under Whitman, who first called for it, and finally McGreevy, New Jersey banned the sale of all guns that aren’t “smart” gun once the AG determines that a gun is “smart” enough. Police, of course, are exempt. Now, under Corzine, they want to ban .50 calibers with a law so broad it’ll cover a lot of muzzle loaders. How many shooting ranges are left in NJ now vs. 1968? How many gun shops?

Today it’s shooting culture is near death. New Jersey can’t really be brought back. Sure, there are still plenty of people there who like to shoot, but the state has done everything it can to drive those people out, and make them give up their sport. New Jersey even regulates air guns as if they were firearms.  It is very difficult to bring new people into shooting in New Jersey, and the climate over there makes ownership rather risky.  The inevitable result is slow decline.

I got into the issue because I had exposure to lawful firearms use as a child. I had exposure to gun shows. I could shoot cans off my Uncle’s deck without fear of being arrested by the police. Hell, we used to shoot cans in front of the state trooper who liked to sit in the church parking lot across the street looking for speeders. I was brought back into the shooting community by a friend who grew up shooting. Culture is important.

We must politically oppose measures which are designed merely to destroy the shooting community. Attacking gun shops, gun ranges, gun shows, and politically weak elements of the shooting community (think .50 cal shooters) are not designed to prevent crime. Anyone who cares to fact check for 10 minutes on google can figure that out. They are designed to chip away at the shooting culture, and eliminate it. Once they do that, gun control becomes easy. Just look at New Jersey.

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How Did You Get Involved?

Jeff points out the story of how Sandra Froman became involved in the gun issue.  How did you become involved?   I’ll tell my story.  There are a few things that might be surprising, or maybe not:

  1. I grew up in a household without guns.  My mother would not have allowed a gun in the house.
  2. I did not own my own firearm until I was 25 years old.
  3. My first firearm was an Romanian AK-47 variant.
  4. I wasn’t all that into shooting when I bought the gun.  I bought it because politicians kept saying I shouldn’t have one.   Yeah, I’m like that.

I did have exposure to firearms growing up.   While my father and mother were not gun owners, nor were they reflexively anti-gun.  They did not indoctrinate me with anti-gun and anti-freedom values, and did make the mistake of letting me spend a lot of time around my uncle, who got into them when I was a teenager.  I can remember going to my first gun show before Papa Bush’s import ban went into effect, and seeing tables with Norincos on it.  I would have been around 14 or so at the time I suppose.  My uncle owned a few M1 Carbines, a pistol or two, and a few BB guns and air rifles, which we were allowed to shoot targets and run around the woods behind his house with unsupervised (the horror!).  I had a lot of fun shooting at targets, cans, various glassware and other such things.  It was a lot of fun!  At this point, I was only vaguely aware of gun control as an issue.  I knew some people wanted background checks.  This never really seemed to be unreasonable to me as a kid.  I was aware there were constitutional protections for firearms ownership, and never really considered that there might be people out there who disagreed with this in a serious way.

After I entered high school, and later college, I got away from shooting, and forgot about the fun I used to have.  Probably the first thing that made me stand up and pay attention to the issue was Papa Bush’s assault weapons ban, which he did using an executive order under his powers authorized by the Gun Control Act of 1968’s “sporting purposes” clause.  Now, at this point, I understood the differences between a machine gun, and a semi-automatic gun that looked like a machine gun, so I realized for the first time that people were willing to ban semi-automatic firearms based on looks.

The thing that really turned me into a serious opponent of the gun-ban lobby was when I was a sophomore in college and Clinton passed the 1994 Crime Bill which basically put a ban on an entire class of firearms.  At the time, I didn’t realize just how silly the drafting was, so I actually thought it more like California’s ban, rather than just a ban on bayonet lugs and flash hiders.  I still thought it was unconstitutional.  I never really thought much about the ban on actual machine guns.   That happened when I was a kid.   I knew you could get them, but that it was difficult.  I didn’t know, at the time, exactly how the law worked.

I stayed out of shooting until just before 2000, my friend Jason, who you all remember as the guy who had the Calico M950 blow up in his face (he finally had the fragments removed the other day, BTW), took me to shoot his Calico M100 and Beretta Tomcat .32 at the Bucks County PGC shooting range (now closed).  I remembered how much I used to like shooting when I was a kid; it had been the first time I shot a gun since I was a teenager.  A month or so later, Jason informed me that a gun shop in Feasterville was selling Romanian AK-47 variants for about 300 bucks.  I was shocked to find out they actually weren’t covered by the ban, and given the fact that I knew the current administration would disapprove, I jumped at the chance.   The first shot out of my SAR-1 was the first center fire rifle cartridge I had ever fired in my life.   It was downhill from there.

A few weeks after aquiring the AK-47, I decided to join the NRA.   Shortly after I also joined the SAF.   I got into reading blogs in 2002.  The first blog was Reason’s Hit & Run.   Early blogs after that were Volokh, Insty, Vodkapundit, Steven Den Beste, and The Belmont Club.   The first gun blog I became aware of was Kim’s Nation of Riflemen.  From there I became aware of SayUncle, Bitter, and Jeff Soyer.   The rest of them all came later.

Of course, I started my own blog to impress Bitter, and convince her to go on a date with me.   You can read about the rest on my about page.  So what’s your story?

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Some Dialog

It looks like one of the blogs I linked to earlier in the day has decided to engage me in some dialog:

So I was a little surprised to see that I was branded as an anti-gun misanthrope simply for posting about an article on Gun Guys; here’s my response

I didn’t say misanthrope. I did say anti-gun, which was a bit of an assumption on my part, I will admit. But is it accurate?:

First, you’re right; I do not like guns although I was raised even as a little girl to know how to handle them and to shoot. But not liking is rather different from “anti-gun”.

I respect anyone’s right to not like guns. I will fully admit they aren’t for everyone. I should probably clarify terms of art here. On our blogosphere community, “anti-gun” is synonymous with “pro-gun control”, and yeah, we tend to fairly broadly apply it.

Second, while I am strongly FOR gun education and safety, I do not campaign against guns or likewise. To some degree, adults should be able to choose their particular interests without having the feds in your face all the time.

Does this include my interest in shooting .50 BMG caliber rifles, AR-15 rifles and Glock pistol? I would hope someone who eschews the label “anti-gun” would agree that law abiding adults should be free to shoot the firearms they are most comfortable with, and enjoy shooting. If you support banning these, then you support taking away the guns I enjoy shooting, which, at least in my book, would qualify as “anti-gun”.

Third, as part of item two, I support intelligent gun laws that allow those who want to shoot as a passtime (or use for protection). I just happen to prefer not to use, see, or even have brought into my home or office a handgun or anything larger.

And I would agree that’s totally within your rights to not want a gun or to want one in your home. It’s “intelligent gun laws” that I expect would be the point of contention between us. What might be intelligent to you, probably isn’t to me. I’m not saying you’re unintelligent, just that the label is very subjective.

Fourth – and here’s probably the biggest gap between us – while some may call it issue advocacy at The Gun Guys, I find them a good place to start for information on an issue that I can then research through other means. After checking out several items, I find GunGuys generally less invested in spin than many of the sites that promote the “give every American a gun” ideals.

As someone who knows just about all the federal, and many state gun laws, and knows quite a bit about firearms mechanically, and the various shooting sports out there, I can tell you with some authority the Gun Guys are pretty much full of crap. You can choose not to believe that if you want, but it’s true. We tend to ignore them in the gun blogosphere, because they are generally so far off base as to not add much serious to the conversation. Even Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, we dignify with more thoughtful responses.

Since this post mentions the need for education, I say hell yes! We can start with a better reading of the 2nd amendment as to what it DOES say, rather than what some wish to infer.

I know what it says, I’ve spent a fairly large amount of time researching what it means aside from the plain words. I’ve also researched a number of state constitutional provisions, many of which are much more clear about protecting an individual rights. Lately, even the liberal constitutional scholars like Larry Tribe and Stanford Levinson have embraced the view that it protects an individual right. The legal academy has generally come to accept the individual rights view.

Now how the scope of this right will be constructed, or should be constructed, by the courts is up for debate, but all we generally ask is that the right to keep and bear arms be held in the same regard as other constitutional rights.

 

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