The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Imama Fouad El-Bayly of Johnstown Islamic Center says of Ayan Hirsi Ali killed:
She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death.
That sounds like a threat to me, rather than a mere statement. Given that, I would like to know why this Imam hasn’t been arrested and charged with making threats?
Hat Tip to Instapundit
I’ve given my friend Jason guest blogging privs. He had an out of battery explosion of a 9mm round that landed him in the ER. He’s fine, but I’ve given him posting privs so that he can tell us all about it.
Today is a day to celebrate the earth by killing, grilling, and eating a small part of it. OK, well, I’ll have to leave the killing to the butcher, since I don’t have any live chickens handy to do the killing myself. But on the menu today is:
And of course, I will be mixing up some margaritas. Yes, nothing says “I love the Earth” more than conspicuous consumption. Now, if you’ll excuse us while we drive to the store in our SUV to round up ingredients.
UPDATE 06/11/2008:
Anyone searching for Obama’s record on Gun Control need look no further than this NRA Fact Sheet on the positions Senator Obama has held over the years.
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SayUncle tells us that Obama is bringing gun control back out to the front and center. Maybe this will give the Republicans a chance to win back their majority.
Also, I don’t know what planet Obama lives on where you would a) shoot at deer with a 9mm pistol, or b) that a Glock 19 can hold 19 rounds of ammunition. I carry a Glock 19. The Glock 19 holds 15 rounds of ammunition. The number 19 is the model number you dummy! Maybe if you ever left Chicago and DC, you’d know that.
If the Democrats know what’s good for them, they’ll tell Obama to shut his stinking pie hole. There’s nothing more wrong than a politician trying to legislate on something they clearly know nothing about.
UPDATE: Anyone looking for Barack Obama’s record on gun control needs to look no farther than here, which documents his anti-gun voting record in the Illinois Statehouse.
UPDATE: Let’s also not forget Obama’s proposal to ban any sales of firearms within a five mile radius of any school or public park. We call this the Obama Gun Sales Exclusion Zone.  Here on the blogosphere, we’ve been compiling maps detailing what this means for various metropolitan areas.
Did this guy get fired for taking up David Codrea’s Airsoft Challenge? Sketchy on details, but if it was the case, do you think the paper would publish the result?  I doubt it.
I was watching Nightline last night, and they ran a story of people who were cashing in on the Virginia Tech tragedy in various ways, such as registering domains like www.vatechlawsuit.com, and the like. Of course, they seem to have overlooked a pretty big example of this.
… despite the fact that I’ve said I can live with some gun control, I still think it’s pretty much useless. While I think we will have to live with background checks, if you look at the statistics, the number of criminals who obtained firearms through straw purchase increased by just about the same number as the decrease in criminals who got their firearms through licensed dealers before the Brady Act went into effect.
Now the gun control folks think they need to shut down straw purchasing, but of course ignore the fact that it will just probably increase theft and gun smuggling.
But the technology exists to screen at point of sale without affecting my ability to go into a gun shop, pay money, and walk out with my purchase. Shutting down other avenues would mean some serious infringements, and shutting down straw purchases is probably not even possible. Even if you could do it however, the demand would be satisfied through other channels. Trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals who demand them is a losing battle. The public demands we make a token effort, and I doubt the courts would invalidate and instant background check as an unconstitutional infringement. But I think it’s important to point out that the token effort is still mostly useless. Where there’s demand for a product, someone will step up to supply that demand. Even if banned civilian sales entirely, there’s always smuggling. It’s not hard to make guns, or smuggle them. We certainly see it done regularly with illegal drugs. Guns aren’t materially different.
Carolyn McCarthy, who doesn’t even know what a barrel shroud is, has proposed new limits to be placed on magazine capacity.  Gun Laws News has the details on H.R. 1859.  Did anyone check to see if she knows what a magazine is?
Can someone tell me how having 10 rounds in a magazine makes a firearm any less lethal? It takes a few seconds to change a magazine. The Virginia Tech killer would have had to carry three magazines instead of two? Pardon me if this sounds rather useless.
The good news is, the bill has no cosponsors, and it’s been two days. Typically legislation that has legs will have a lot of cosponsors right out of the gate. We’ll see if she can manage to guilt some of her colleagues onto the bill, but it looks to me like it doesn’t have legs.  Still worth a letter to your Congress Critter though.
Still some commenting going on over at Dr. Helen’s. I thought I’d replicate some of it here for the gun blogosphere, because I think it’s good stuff.  Helen comments:
[…] Notice the politics of how hard or easy it is for certain people to get guns– if there is threat etc. of domestic violence against a woman, a man loses his right to purchase a gun–even if he is accused unfairly. However, if someone stalks women, scares the crap out of university classes and is said to be an imminent danger to himself or others, then neither the courts nor the hospitals have a duty to report this because they might stigmitize the mentally ill. If a man is stigmitized as a domestic abuser, well surely he is guilty without much investigtion! It is one extreme to the other. We must look at the facts logically and think about what should legitimately constitute a reason to deny a person access to a weapon. Surely, we can do that without mass hysteria against the innocent. Or maybe I am being naive.
I think this is a really good point, but I’m a pessimist about resolving it. I replied:
I think, unfortunately, in this issue, it’s very difficult to have a reasonable discussion. Not among individuals, but in the political space, as far as what would be appropriate public policy on the matter.
We have plenty of people on the pro-gun side who believe “shall not be infringed” means that no federal or state controls on possession of firearms are constitutional. I disagree with this notion, but the issue is full of absolutists.
On the anti-gun side, it’s been pretty clear all along that their goal is to ban most firearms, particularly ones that are useful for self-defense. I have no doubt that many want to see all firearms banned. This precludes any reasonable debate on the issue, because the anti-gun side is always seeing every measure as a baby step towards the eventual goal of prohibition.
There are gun control laws that I am willing to accept and don’t think are that infringing, but I generally won’t say that in the political space because it emboldens the other side. I think there’s quite a lot of us who would be more open to a reasonable discussion if the other side weren’t pushing prohibition.
Of course, they claim to not be pushing it, but the fact is they have never met a gun control law, including the DC ban, that they didn’t like. I don’t think there’s really much reasonable discussion to be had as long as that’s the case.
I’d love to have a reasonable discussion, but because the Brady Campaign, once called Handgun Control Inc., just wants to crap all over the second amendment, rather than have a reasonable discussion, and listen to our concerns, it’s not going to happen. If the Brady’s are truly interested in keeping guns out of the hands of the criminally irresponsible and mentally incompetent, they need to accept our right to bear arms. As long as they are pushing a disguised prohibitionist agenda, there will be no reasonable discussion.
Dr. Helen brings up the topic of NICS improvements. This started out as a comment over on her blog, but it started getting big, so I figured I’d do a linky-then-comment deal here instead.
The NICS improvement bill was something that has been talked about on the gun blogosphere before. A lot of folks are against it because they are against background checks entirely, largely because they don’t believe in the concept of “prohibited person”. It’s often heard that once you serve your debt to society, you get your rights back.
I am sympathetic to the argument, because I do think the current laws catch way too many non-violent people in its net. There is no compelling reason for denying someone convicted of tax evasion their right to keep and bear arms, and yet it is done. I do oppose a large portion of the current felon in possession law. Felon in possession should only apply to people who have committed violent acts, not to non-violent felonies, which there are many.
I do support laws which prohibit criminals, who commit acts of violence, and are convicted through due process of law, from possessing weapons. It’s accepted in our legal tradition that people can be deprived of their liberties through due process; if part of the sentence can include being thrown in jail for several year, part of it can also include not possessing weapons for whatever amount of time the legislature sees fit. I also support people who are adjudicated mentally incompetent from possessing arms.
That said, I think the current practice of Congress not funding any of the programs that can restore the rights of people is wrong. There should be a path for people who have lead clean lives for years to have their right restored. I’m sympathetic to someone who as an 18 or 19 year old, might have gotten in trouble with the law, but has lead a clean life for years and is now a responsible member of the community. There should be recourse for those people.
But it doesn’t alter the fact that if we’re going to have NICS, and we are, it’s not going away, that it should function effectively. It’s already illegal for the people who have those criminal or mental health record to even touch a firearm, so it doesn’t alter the legal situation to have NICS updated with those records.
So therefore, to the disappointment of many of you, I’m sure, I support making sure NICS has the data it needs on criminal and mental health records. We should accept that, and concentrate on things like getting rid of Lautenberg, getting funding for restoring rights to people who have truly reformed themselves, and modifying felon-in-possession statutes to only cover truly violent and mentally unstable people.