Sebastian – Page 266 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Breaking: Wayne LaPierre to Announce Candidacy for Mayorship

Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association, plans to soon announce NRA’s next offensive in the struggle against gun control by running for Mayor of New York City.

“We gave this a lot of thought, and have decided the only way we’re going to stop MAIG once and for all is for your NRA to run New York City,” LaPierre said, to a private conference with gun friendly media and bloggers, “The only way to stop a bad guy in the Mayor’s office, is to put a good guy in the Mayor’s office!”

NRA plans to launch a multi-million dollar ad buy in New York to get ahead of potential rivals in the early stages of the campaign.

“We’re going to get out ahead of this thing. We expect our main rival to come at us hard, but we think this early ad campaign will soften him up,” LaPierre said of his likely rival, disgraced former Congressman Anthony Wiener, “by the time we head into the general election, we expect his campaign to be completely impotent.”

LaPierre noted the ad campaign will launch sometime in the next several weeks, after the press conference announcing the candidacy is finally scheduled.

Media Coverage of the Doylestown Rally

There were quite a number of media roaming around the rally, so this naturally made me wonder how fair the media coverage would be. Only two news outlets have covered it, or at least put their stories online. The first is the Intelligencer:

The pro-gun protesters tried to shout down speakers throughout the 45-minute rally, even as Moore sought a moment of silence for victims of gun violence and as Kessleman spoke of his dead son.

â€œI thought that was disrespectful,â€ Avino said. â€œItâ€™s a poor reflection on them.â€

There weren’t any groups backing the protest, which was largely self-organized through informal communication networks, forums, Facebook, etc. Going in, it was hard to say what a smart tactic would be, because you don’t know what our opponents are going to focus on. If it’s a more vigil type rally, with speakers recounting lost loves ones, aggressive tactics would be boorish. But for an explicitly political rally, with calls to political action, chanting, etc, I don’t see why quiet opposition is necessarily the smart tactic.

This rally was not a vigil type rally, but it was explicitly political, with calls for action, including confiscation. More aggressive tactics were justified. When the line “for too many years Congress has done the bidding of the NRA,â€ our side cheered. When they called for bans on guns and magazine, our side booed. The speaker from New Jersey was heckled with calls to “Go back to Jersey!” When they tried to rally their crowd with “What do we want? Action!” and the pro-2A crowd drowned them out with “Freedom!” Cries of “leave us alone” were also often heard from the crowd when speakers called for action.

Where I think our side did cross the line was the few early hecklers during the moment of silence. Fortunately that quickly stopped, and our side did observe it, but those few early people own that quote above. Channel 10 News also covered the rally, I think a bit more fairly than the Intelligencer:

View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

UPDATE: Here’s video from the rally organizers. Decide for yourself whether they are being shouted down or just opposed.

Delaware Private Transfer Ban Passes House

NRA is alerting on HB 35, which passed the Delaware House by a 24-17 vote. Again, this bill isn’t just about firearm sale, it stipulates sales or transfers, defined as:

(3) â€œTransferâ€ means assigning, pledging, leasing, loaning, giving away, or otherwise disposing of, but does not include:

(A) the loan of a firearm for any lawful purpose, for a period of 14 days or less, by the owner of said firearm to a person known personally to him or her;

(B) a temporary transfer for any lawful purpose that occurs while in the continuous presence of the owner of the firearm, provided that such temporary transfer shall not exceed 24 hours in duration;

(C) the transfer of a firearm for repair, service or modification to a licensed gunsmith or other person lawfully engaged in such activities as a regular course of trade or business; or

(D) a transfer that occurs by operation of law or because of the death of a person for whom the prospective transferor is an executor or administrator of an estate or a trustee of a trust created in a will.

Again, if you’re cohabiting with someone, say, in a gay relationship because you can’t get married, if you leave town for three weeks and leave your firearms in the care of your significant other, you’re making an unlawful transfer. Why the need to restrict the duration in section (B) to 24 hours? If I invite someone on my land to shoot, and loan him a gun for the weekend trip, should I be charged with a misdemeanor?

The bill also exempts people who hold Delaware Concealed Deadly Weapons Licenses, but it should be noted that Delaware is technically may-issue (though unlike a lot of other states, it’s not impossible to get a CDWL in Delaware if you jump through the hoops).

Also, this amendment brings up an interesting point on banning private transfers: if you transfer your gun into the dealer’s inventory, and the prospective buyer flunks the check, what then? Are you out the transfer fee to get your own gun back? Delaware’s bill says no, but that’s another nail in the coffin of the proposed federal bill I hadn’t thought of. Currently, the answer would likely be yes, you’d have to pay and go through the 4473 and whole deal to get your own gun back. I think you still would in Delaware too, except the dealer couldn’t charge you for it. This also will make it less likely dealers will want to process third party transfers.

This is what “universal background checks” mean folks. It’s one of those things that sounds dandy until you start thinking about how it would need to be implemented. This bill still has to pass the Delaware Senate, and NRA is asking Delawareans to contact their State Senators.

ATF Raid on FPS Russia

ATF raids FPS Russia. Seems they are using a novel theory that if you take video of, say, shooting Tannerite, then make money off the YouTube videos, you need to have an explosives license because you’re “engaged in the business.” Sounds like bullshit to me. Sounds like his crime was having a high profile in a gun issue, and doing things that generally displease bureaucrats.

Enough Links For a News Dump?

I guess we’ll see:

NRA President: Gun control advocates were ready for Newtown. Once Obama had won re-election, a gun control push was a fore drawn conclusion. Newtown was merely the pretext.

Another illegal mayor?

Mike Bloomberg, best thing to happen to the GOP since Citizen’s United? That all depends on the GOP. Before they can take advantage of the opportunity Bloomberg presents, they have to first stand up for Second Amendment rights. So far, they’ve been doing well, but that needs to hold.

A man breaks into someone’s home, gets shot dead, and his family claims he was a victim. Thirdpower found the guy’s rap sheet.

That .323 caliber Enfield. What’s scary is that it would seem the Connecticut State Police know next to nothing about guns. That check for the C183 I mentioned yesterday came straight from the police report. It was the cops that assumed that was a firearm.

Sean crashed one of Bloomberg’s pressers, talking about what Bloomberg’s “background check” bill would actually do.

Mr. C and Keewee are OK after a big land slide on Whidbey Island. Didn’t happen near them. We’re glad to hear that. Mr. C organizesÂ postal matches for gun bloggersÂ and readers. If you have any ammo to spare, they are fun.

Big Democratic donors are demanding some action on gun control, or screw those Dems who hold office in cousin humping redneck states. Have it your way. I’ll be happy to contain the Democratic Party to the Northeast and West Coast.

The biggest gun banning states have the lowest rates for actually prosecuting crimes involving guns. Pennsylvania bans private transfers, and it’s a well established fact that Philly prosecutors rarely use these laws to go after criminals. So why have them?

Do Background Checks Work?

Clayton takes a look at some of the claims made about background checks working, and is skeptical of the evidence presented. I’ve always thought this BJS survey of criminal gun use, including where criminals were getting their guns, shows pretty clearly that all background checks have accomplished is shifting the source from retail, or lie and buy, to street sources which are more difficult if not impossible to regulate.

We Have the Language of Reid’s Bill, S.649

The latest language of S.649 can be found here. This is the bill that will be bought up for a vote. The “background check” language is identical to the language I analyzed in S.374. The rest of the bill is the same as S.179, Gillibrand’s trafficking bill. It’s essentially those two bills combined together into one bill. Needless to say, this bill is unacceptable and needs to be opposed, unless you want to have it be a felony in many conditions to hand a gun to a friend, such as plinking on your farm.

Attempt to Repeal Castle Doctrine in New Hampshire

Apparently it’s passed the House. The Democrats in New Hampshire I guess are intent on getting as us neanderthals one way or another.

A Question I’ve Wondered About

I’ve heard Nancy Lanza used as a poster child for safe storage by gun control advocates, thinking it was a bit premature to presume the guns were not stored in a safe manner. Now we seem to have a much better picture:

The guns used in the shootings were apparently all purchased by the shooterâ€™s mother. There is currently no indication that the shooter attempted to purchase the guns and was denied. The gun locker at 36 Yogananda St. was open when the police arrived. It was unlocked and there was no indication that it had been broken into.

So we at least know she had a safe, and that it was unlocked when the police arrived. It’s not clear from reading the search warrants where the safe was in the house. Did he shoot her to get the key? If so, is there any “safe storage” law that would help?

Bad Week for Mark Kelly?

First he won’t be getting his AR-15, and then his daughter’s bulldog kills a seal in Laguna Beach, and the whole thing gets caught on someone’s cell phone camera. To be fair, Kelly dealt with the dog correctly. His daughter didn’t seem to have a clue what to do, and seemed pretty upset by the whole ordeal. I’m not sure whoever was playing tug of war with the seal against the dog was really helping things either.