Sebastian – Page 237 – Shall Not Be Questioned

ATF Releases Trace Data for 2012

You can find the story here. ATF site here. They are including two pieces of data I don’t recall from previous years, namely the age of the offender, and the a breakdown of the reason for the trace request. Looking quickly at Pennsylvania’s data, there’s a few surprising things. One is that the age data for Pennsylvania skews much older than I would expect. Generally speaking, you can repeat the old cliche that guns don’t kill people, people do, but really, young men kill people. It’s very interesting that the people Pennsylvania authorities are pulling guns off of skew older. I’m also wondering why so many traces from Pennsylvania don’t list a reason, which is not the case in New Jersey or New York. Interestingly, traced guns in New Jersey have “Found Firearm” as the second reason for traces. New York also trends far older than I would expect as well. When most of the possessors are outside the general age range for criminality, in makes me seriously question how representative traced guns are of crime guns in general.

Lots of interesting data to go through if anyone wants to have a stab at it.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Pre-Clearance Requirement

This is a victory for federalism, but also kind of unfortunate from a gun right point of view, because it dashes my dreams of subjecting New Jersey, New York, California, et al to pre-clearance for gun laws and regulations. Though, it looks like there may still be room for hope. From the opinion:

That is why, in 1966, this Court described the Act as â€œstringentâ€ and â€œpotent,â€ Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 308, 315, 337. The Court nonetheless upheld the Act, concluding that such an â€œuncommon exercise ofcongressional powerâ€ could be justified by â€œexceptional conditions.â€ …

… The Act was limited to areas where Congress found â€œevidence of actual voting discrimination,â€ and the covered jurisdictions shared two characteristics: â€œthe use of tests and devices for voter registration, and a voting rate in the 1964 presidential election at least 12 points below the national average.â€ Id., at 330. The Court explained that â€œ[t]ests and devices are relevant to voting discrimination because of their long history as a tool for perpetratingthe evil; a low voting rate is pertinent for the obvious reason that widespread disenfranchisement must inevitably affect the number of actual voters.â€ Ibid. The Court therefore concluded that â€œthe coverage formula [was] rational in both practice and theory.â€

In other words, when state and local governments are unable to behave themselves, and respect the rights of their citizens, it may justify such far-reaching congressional intervention such as a pre-clearance requirement. Meanwhile, the anti-gun people like Mike Bloomberg, Mayor Rahm, and other members of the merry band of illegal mayors are doing their level best to create those very “exceptional circumstances” that may justify this sort of intervention. So I think I will declare my dream is not dead.

Good News out of Illinois

The anti-gun political machine in Illinois has been doing their damnedest to buy time for local communities to slip gun bans in so that they can be grandfathered in. The good news is we’ve been meeting them town for town. Here is a report compiled by Todd Vandermyde, the NRA lobbyist on the ground in Illinois. Brackets are my additions, or summarizations.

Park Ridge:Â Meeting was postponed until JULY 8th 7:00pm. Power outage due to storms. Report of good turn out.

Highland Park (Lake County): Ban Passed 6-1, [despite overflow turnout.]

Evanston:Â Good turn out reports say 2-1 for us. No action likely tonight.

St Charles:Â Standing room only and Chief Lamkin’s presentation was moved to the first order of business. The forum gravitated to discussion of an AWB, but bottom line…not in St. Charles

River Forest: No report

Marengo:Â “After what I heard this evening, I doubt the City Council would vote for a ban,” Mayor Donald Lockhart say. “There doesn’t seem to be support for a ban.”

Melrose Park: No report

West Chicago (Dupage County):Â 30 or so showed up for us and every committee member was totally opposed to any legislation and recommended that nothing should be pursued.

Park ForestÂ (Cook County): No gun ban on the agenda.Â The Mayor of Park Forest has responded to inquiries, and there is nothing on the agenda at this time.

When we show up, we win. Highland Park is a shame, but let’s see how they deal with spending a fortune defending a lawsuit in federal court. Hopefully we can beat them back everywhere else. I’m really pleased with as ragged as the powers-that-be in Illinois have been running everyone, that we’re still showing up in large numbers in places they probably never expected. Let’s keep the pressure up.

More Discoveries of NYC Taxpayer Money Propping up MAIG

Over at Jammie Wearing Fools. Apparently Bloomberg sent a lobbyist who is on the city payroll to Nevada to push for gun control there. A city lobbyist noted:

â€œWith Bloomberg, one of his strengths is that, because money is no object, he could just go rent office space,â€ a city lobbyist said.â€œIt seems like theyâ€™re being sloppy.â€

It almost makes you question how much faith Bloomberg has in his own BS, that he feels the need to spend taxpayer dollars on this pet project rather than his own dollars, which as noted are substantial.

h/t Instapundit for the article

The Demonization of Gun Owners Continues

We’re all going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, at least according to the NEA’s Vice President:

“I’m not an ordained minister, I’m not a theologian, but [the NRA] are going to hell,” the National Education Association’s vice president said during a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation convention of liberal online activists.

And here I thought we were the religious zealots. I think she probably should have stopped with “I’m not an ordained minister, I’m not a theologian,” and followed this sage, old advice. What’s funny is I’ve gotten flack for referring to the other side as “the enemy,” and often using war metaphors when discussing political struggle. But the other side engages in the same politics of dehumanization. Perhaps there’s some other, old, sage advice that applies here.

Another Colorado Recall Certified

This one is against Senator Angela Giron:

Senator Giron comes from a heavily Democratic district, but one in which gun rights are taken very seriously. Boulder or Aspen, itâ€™s not. During the legislative session, Giron held a townhall meeting in a space for 250 andÂ 750 people showed upÂ to express their anger with her anti-gun votes.

Very good. Hopefully these will be successful recalls. This would definitely send a message.

York County Sees 63% Growth in LTC Issuance

I’ve seen stories like this all around the state. It’s going to be interesting when the State Police release the PICS numbers, which shows how many checks were run on people who apply for LTCs in a given year. The estimate on the number of LTCs issues was around 600,000, statewide. Will it hit 700,000? 800,000? It would be very good for that to be the case, because few politicians want to risk pissing off 800,000 voters in a state of 12 million people.

New Jersey .50 Cal Ban Proceeding

According to ANJRPC:

A3659Â – the fifty caliber ban – was added to the full Assembly agenda for Monday, June 24. This is the final version of this legislation, which has been changing from week to week over the past several months. It bans firearms that shoot centerfire cartridges of any caliber that attain a muzzle energy of 12,000 ft-lbs. or greater. Though limited grandfathering has been added in response to gun owner concerns, the firearms must be registered, cannot be passed down to heirs, and owners will be civilly liable for damages if the firearm is used in a crime. Additionally, the bill has been amended specifically to prevent anyone with a pending order for these firearms from taking possession of them.

I was worried, somewhere, legislators were going to figure out the idea of restricting firearms by muzzle energy rather than caliber. This would exempt all the large bore safari cartridges I can think of, in addition to preserving shotguns and muzzleloaders. The .408 Cheytac would still be legal, as would the .338 Lapua MagnumÂ and .416 Barrett.Â Of course, this could be problematic if your hobby is creating wildcat rounds. As best I can tell, this law will have just about the same effect if they just banned the .50BMG by name. There are plenty of alternatives that have similar properties, but just not quite as much muzzle energy.

It’s amazing to me that politicians are just now getting so concerned about a cartridge that John Browning designed 100 years ago, and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been used to commit a crime anywhere in the United States.

UPDATE: Originally I missed the bit about the proposal requiring a centerfire cartridge. This means any muzzleloading firearm is not covered. I removed that bit.

Flashlight Carry

I’ve carried some form of flashlight for quite some time now, because it’s a good idea to carry one if you carry a firearm, and because it’s just a damn handy thing to have on you. I probably go to my flashlight more often than I go to my multi-tool. I carry a Fenix LD10. I like the Fenix a lot, but I have one pet peeve with it — it’s too easy to accidentally turn on when carrying with the pocket clip. Often times, I don’t notice until the flashlight gets hot, and by then, it’s burned through a good deal of battery.

Does anyone who carries a flashlight regular have a favorite? One good thing about the Fenix is that it takes a single AA battery, so if I drain one using the flashlight as a pocket warmer I’m not out much. It’s also small enough to make carrying on a pocket clip practical. But I’d love to have a flashlight that was a little harder to accidentally switch on.

Ms. Magazine Wimps Out of Gun Debate

We’ve all been anxiously awaiting Part Two of Heidi Yewman’s one month of trying to carry a gun. Apparently because the staff at “Ms.” were overwhelmed with pro-gun commentary, and they are shocked (shocked!) to discover that some people on the Internet might be bozos. So they are shit-canning the rest of the story.

What was Kortâ€™s solution to this dilemma? Incredibly, it was to kill the rest of Yewmanâ€™s series. â€œI donâ€™t think I should post the next two installments of thisâ€”theyâ€™ll only fire up the troops again, and weâ€™re just not equipped to handle this on our blog,â€ Kort wrote.

According to Ms. Kort, who is an Editor editor at “Ms.”, the rest of the series will appear on the Huffington Post. In my career of dealing with presenting and arguing controversial viewpoints on the Internet, I can say it sometimes will challenge your faith in humanity. I can hardly blame “Ms.” for censoring posts featuring the home address of the author, nor do I blame them for censoring truly nasty comments. But I can promise you those are a small minority of the comments that have been censored.

This is straight from the anti-gun playbook: censor dissenting viewpoints and shut down debate, then claim to be doing it because people who have a pro-Second Amendment viewpoint are nasty brutes who just want to bully and intimidate everyone. That has not been my, or anyone else’s experience anywhere else on the Internet where dialog is not moderated and people are relatively free to have open discussion. Yes, some people on the Internet are poster children for the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. This is not news to anyone, and while I support “Ms.” magazine’s editorial discretion, I think bowing out of this is cowardly, and shows they are not committed to having any kind of real discussion on a serious topic.