Sebastian – Page 626 – Shall Not Be Questioned

What a Waste

Article on the destruction of guns in Luzerne County. This is one nasty side effect of all the immigration from New Jersey and New York to Northeastern Pennsylvania. I’m disappointed to see this:

Financed by a $10,000 Project Safe Neighborhoods grant secured by state Rep. Todd Eachus, D-Butler Township, for use the 116th Legislative District, the District Attorneyâ€™s Office offered gift certificates for the Laurel Mall in denominations of $50 per long gun and $75 per handgun.

Eachus is A-rated. How many of those guns destroyed have historical value? Collectors should get first dibs before the guns are destroyed. You could make a program like this self-funding, essentially hooking up people who don’t want the guns anymore with people who do want them. Destroy the junk? Fine. But this is a waste, both of taxpayer dollars and potential historical collector pieces. Is this something an NRA A-rated politician ought to be enabling? I don’t think so.

A New “Loophole” From the WaPo

So the Washington Post notes that when a dealer gets his FFL revoked, and someone else takes over the company, they can apply for a new FFL. A common thing that seems to happen is a business is owned by some old guy, who in his age can’t seem to keep the bookkeeping straight, so ATF revokes the license. Son takes over the family business, and applies for a new license to keep the dealership, often family businesses, operating. As Richard Gardiner notes, anyone involved on the old license can’t be on the new one:

To be licensed, applicants at a minimum need to be 21, cannot have been prohibited from owning a gun – as with felons and people with certain disabilities – and must have a fixed address. Companies can apply for licenses, but their principals must meet the restrictions for individuals. Initial fees are $200. Licenses last three years. The agency might spend years in court revoking a license from a troubled dealer but by law must approve licenses to eligible applicants within 60 days.

Richard Gardiner, a former counsel for the National Rifle Association who has defended many dealers in ATF revocations, said family members, friends or associates who were not directly involved in the old license are legally entitled to their own licenses. “It’s not a loophole,” he said.

Truth is, license revocation is a poor enforcement mechanism to begin with, which is why the NRA backed reform bill will hopefully pass in the next Congress, which limits the use of revocation for enforcement, and creates a civil penalty structure to replace it. No doubt our opponents, with their penchant for blaming inanimate objects, will argue that the business should be closed, and a gun shops shall never re-open at the same site or under the same name for time immemorial. This is also a poor solution.

Swiss Cops Pull Support for Guns at Home

Looks like doctors and police are lining up to ban military-issue guns in the home. The government, at this point, doesn’t want to do it. How long is that going to last? Police are a tough groups to lose, even more so than Doctors.

It’s worth noting that any time we’ve had the FOP come out against us, we’ve generally lost. Rightly or wrongly, politicians don’t want to stand on the opposite side of rank and file officers. Why? Because most people who are active in their local communities know their local cops, and all politics is local. In the comments a few days ago, we had some folks that were unhappy with Constitutional Carry in Arizona and Alaska, because it allows for officers to disarm people during a stop. My guess is this was in there to buy the silence of law enforcement. We need to keep the police on our side, and maintain the unspoken relationship. If we lose cops, we lose. This probably does not bode well for the Swiss militia system.

Is This Thing On?

Sorry about the outage folks. See, a few days ago I noticed Verizon was offering a 25 megabit/sec up and 25 megabit/sec down FiOS deal for 100 bucks a month. Given that’s what I was paying for a 20 megabit/sec up and 5 megabit/sec down FiOS circuit, I decided to remedy this situation. I’ve done this a few times, and it’s always gone without a hitch. Suddenly you just find yourself upgraded to ludicrous speed.

This time the sales guy put in the order to change my account, over to a DHCP dynamic IP account, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t notice until everything suddenly went offline. A call to Verizon’s tech support quickly revealed the problem when the tech told me “I’m going to cancel all the leases and reset your line,” which prompted me to say “Leases? What leases? I have a static block. We don’t need no steenking leases!” But this was apparently not reflected in my new account information. Panic sets in. The tech can’t do anything without billing’s approval, and billing, who keep bankers hours, are already closed. This means I’ll be out for the night.

So this morning I called first thing at 9, when the billing people arrive, and thanks to the valiant efforts of Nicole at Verizon, we seem to be operational again. I was very worried due to some system issue or another, I would be unable to get back the same IP addresses, which would have protracted this outage another day or so, and maybe more for some people being fed by a DNS server who doesn’t honor cache expiration. So now we should be up and running again with the old IP block, much faster speed, and a 50 dollar account credit for the month.

I’ve generally been very happy with FiOS, and Verizon was very cooperative and apologetic once they realized their error. I’ll forgive a mistake that gets fixed smoothly. This is good, because I really only have two choices when it comes to high speed business Internet, and Verizon is definitely the lesser evil.

Setback for Concealed Carry in California

The judge in this case rules that the right to carry a weapon concealed is limited. The court here essentially argues that California allows unloaded open carry, with loaded open carry being permitted if there’s an immediate danger, and that this satisfies the constitutional requirement.Â Â I think the courts reasoning here is flawed, but the argument seems to be that since it was the concealed carry statute that was challenged, rather than the open carry statute, that the concealed carry statute could be held to pass constitutional muster. The court at least seems to acknowledge that a total prohibition on guns outside the home could be problematic, but this is far from the ruling we want. The opinion is here if you want to read it.

Carrying in the Cold

I was puzzled by Miguel’s question here, since cold weather usually makes carry easier for this Yankee:

OK, so how the heck do you carry up North? Grant you we donâ€™t have the clothes so we work on the 17 layers of Hawaiian shirts and Guayaberas to achieve insulation, WalMart has been smart enough to import long johns from other stores and it is a problem to be wearing 6 pairs of socks with flip flops or sandals. This bulkiness leaves very little room for the regular carry gear I use.

Oh hell, Iâ€™ll freeze.Â Iâ€™ll practice dry firing with stuffed oven mittens a bit later.

For you southern folks who may not experience extreme cold very often, the trick is to get a good, versatile winter coat. A winter coat hides the gun on your hip much more effectively than a light jacket or a shirt. Coats also tend to have more pockets for things like flashlights, OC, blades and spare magazines.Â Accessibility is achieved by wearing a thick enough outer shirt that you can leave the coat open. If you zip the coat up, obviously accessibility becomes a problem. If it does get so cold that you have to bundle up, a pocket gun with a decent pocket holster in the outside pocket of a coat jacket works well. Some people even like a snubby in a jacket pocket because you can fire it straight through the pocket, though I don’t know how you’d practice that, so I’ve never considered doing it.

If you carry a Glock like I do, with the right kind of gloves, you can shoot just fine and still keep your hands warm. You won’t have as much feel for your grip or the trigger, so it takes some practice. It can be done though. I don’t look forward to winter, but I do look forward to having more flexibility in terms of carry that a winter coat brings you.

Guam’s Gun Laws

Chris, who recently visited, talks about firearm ownership in Guam, which is a US territory. I guess they are worried if there are too many guns on the island, it will tip over.

Quote of the Day

Dave Hardy responds to Justice Breyer’s assertion that the founders were familiar with gun laws:

Of course the Framers knew of gun laws. They required most male citizens to have at least one.

Getting a Gun in Chicago

Many folks believe the current process is too difficult, and here you have more examples of what a gap there is between elite and ordinary opinion on self-defense:

During the final hour of a training class in November, the ears of the 16 permit-seekers perked up when an instructor started his lesson with the course’s most eagerly anticipated lecture: the use of deadly force. But many weren’t happy to learn they can’t use their weapons to stop a garage burglary, to scare off car thieves or even to frighten a trespasser.

“This don’t sit well with me,” said a retiree and military veteran after being told it isn’t legal to shoot through a closed door, even if he believes he’s defending himself.

“You don’t have to agree with it, (but) my job is to tell you the law,” the instructor said. “I’m not asking you to accept the law, I’m asking you to understand it.”

Because of the militia purpose outlined in the Second Amendment, I believe it’s within the states military powers to require firearms training (though not as a precondition for exercising the right), but if the state is going to require it, the state must pay for it. That’s not the case in Chicago, certainly. I can think of ways the city could structure its training requirement so that it would be constitutional, but its current method should not be declared so.

First Person Perspective

When I was out in Hawaii, I decided to get one of these to film things I wanted a first person perspective for. It works, especially with a flip camera screwed on to it, but you have to position the hat just right. I’m a lot more impressed with Joe’s video camera glasses. Go see it in action on an IPSC stage.

I wish they made one that would clip to an existing pair of prescription glasses. I could shoot with uncorrected camera glasses on, since my uncorrected vision isn’t that awful, but obviously seeing clearly is better.