Joe shows it can be done easily with ten round magazines:
The Brady solution would probably be to ban semi-automatic firearms, but knowing that’s politically infeasible, they will try to get as close as they can.
Author: Sebastian
Civil Rights Victory
Dave Kopel reports that South Dakota has been enjoined from discriminating against legal residents when it comes to carry permits. It was reached on equal protection grounds, rather than Second Amendment grounds, however.
Too Many Safeties
Instapundit reports on what can happen when your gun has too many safeties.
Travelers Insurance Anti-Gun?
It would certainly seem so. I insure my guns through NRA, so it’s not an issue that’s ever come up with my insurance company.
Public Comment Period
NRA is asking folks to go comment on the long gun reporting requirement ATF is proposing. You can read their comments here. Clearly what ATF needs it more guns being reported to it that it will fail to adequately track.
Stratfor on the Mexican Gun Canard
Interestingly, the part of this argument pertaining to guns has been adopted by many politicians and government officials in the United States in recent years. It has now become quite common to hear U.S. officials confidently assert that 90 percent of the weapons used by the Mexican drug cartels come from the United States. However, a close examination of the dynamics of the cartel wars in Mexico — and of how the oft-echoed 90 percent number was reached — clearly demonstrates that the number is more political rhetoric than empirical fact.
Read the whole thing. Hat tip to No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money.
UPDATE: Key bit of information I forgot:
In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.
So can we count on our opponents to stop using this now completely discredited statistic? I’ll expect that will come in the mail with my Unicorn.
UPDATE: More as I’m reading:
In fact, there is an entire cottage industry that has developed to smuggle such weapons, and not all the customers are cartel hit men. There are many Mexican citizens who own guns in calibers such as .45, 9 mm, .40 and .44 magnum for self-defense — even though such guns are illegal in Mexico.
I’ve said before, what if a lot of the guns being trafficked are going to ordinary Mexicans to defend themselves from the cartels? That’s not the kind of smuggling I’m interested in stopping. It might be illegal, but it’s not wrong.
Holders DOJ and FOIA
DOJ is selectively complying with FOIA requests. Well, if they are even telling Republican Senators to take a walk, it’s hardly surprising they are stonewalling ordinary Joes.
Lots of Commentary on Use of Deadly Force on Unarmed Attackers
Especially in the comments over at Above the Law, many of whom are obviously lawyers. Massad Ayoob has some worthwhile things to say about defense against unarmed opponents. I don’t think it’s a situation you ever want to be in, and is one reason I’ve been convinced of the utility of carrying a defensive spray.
Multiple attackers is a tough situation, however. And it wouldn’t do much good to spray one guy only to get rushed by others. The advantage of spray is you can employ it much much earlier in the confrontation than you can deadly force. It is a step above verbal commands on the force scale. A good strategy would be, early on in the encounter, before it escalates, to spray the most aggressive member of the group and run like hell, while drawing your firearm. If you’re pursued by the remaining meatheads and end up trapped, your use of deadly force is going to look a lot more reasonable to police, prosecutors, and if it goes that far, to a jury.
Ung’s situation is far from good, however. DiDinato’s group was five strong. Ung had two other people with him, including one female. We don’t know yet whether Ung or any of the people in his group were intoxicated. Even if Ung wasn’t, it could complicate his retreat options if the others are. It could complicate his options if any of the members of his party were running their mouths off.
But generally speaking, if you shoot someone who’s unarmed, you can probably expect a trial, unless it was so clear cut (like a group of men surrounding a sixty year old man) that no prosecutor would risk it. Whether or not Ung acted reasonably, or not, will be up to the jury to decide. Once you’re in that situation, in a lot of ways your life is already ruined.
Grassley Fires Back
In response to the giant middle finger from ATF, Grassley present the evidence his office is in possession of. The evidence indicates that ATF has been telling border dealers to proceed with suspected straw sales, and report information on the guns and buyers to ATF. This represented approximately 769 firearms, only 103 of which are now accounted for.
“In addition to these specific weapons, the indictment of Avila and other references approximately 769 firearms. Of those, the indictment refers to the recovery of only about 103 weapons. So, where are the other approximately 666 weapons references in the indictment? Why did the ATF not seize them?”
There is documented evidence that the gun that was used in the murder of CBP Agent Terry is one of the guns ATF lost track of. Grassley also smacked down Holder for stonewalling him:
The Justice Department’s reply asked that Committee staff stop speaking to law enforcement personnel about these matter. However, if not for the bravery and patriotism of law enforcement personnel who were willing to put their careers on the line, this Committee would have been forced to rely on nothing more than rumors in the blogosphere and a Justice Department denial to resolve these allegations. We need more than that. To be an effective check on Executive Branch power, we need cold, hard facts. We sill seek them from whatever source is necessary.
Unfortunately, the Justice Department’s letter suggested that my attempts to seek information about these matters might be politically motivated. I understand the Department needs to “protect … law enforcement personnel … from inappropriate political influence.” However, there is a difference between inappropriate political influence and appropriate holding officials accountable to the American people.
He goes on to note that the family of Agent Terry deserve answers, and encourages Holder to “come clean.” I’ve said before, when our opponents argue there’s not enough funding for ATF, because the evil NRA has seen to it that they are kept underfunded, that the reason ATF is on a short leash is because they have incompetent enforcers of our federal gun laws. I have no doubt there are many fine employees and dedicated workers in the organization. Indeed, the whistleblowers here would be among those, but the agency has suffered under poor leadership for years. That’s not our doing. It’s cultural, and it’s been that way since the moonshine business dried up for them in the 1970s.
Hat Tip to David Codrea’s examiner.com site for the Grassley Document.
Where Are Your Grassroots?
The New Trajectory blog seems rather upset that our side organized to skew the results of his poll. Now imagine instead of just a minor bit of fun like that, it was calls to congressional offices instead? Now you see why we win. Where’s the gun control forums and blogs linking to send their people to counter what we did? There aren’t any, because there are no grassroots behind the gun control movement.