Category: Gun Rights

Thanks to Tam (who suggests we’re all probably not paranoid enough) for this and this stories on how Uncle Sam is crushing our privacy and protections from searches. Let me tell you, I’m so glad we don’t have that civil liberty stomping Bush in the White House anymore, and replaced him with a thorough progressive Democrat who will protect our civil liberties.

Often times when I talk about self-hosting, people wonder why I would do such a thing, given that hosting providers are cheap, and doing it myself is more complicated. This is a big part of the reason why. What happened to Wyatt is another big part of the reason why. I control the horizontal and the vertical (even if the signal is still vulnerable, it makes it harder for them, at least), and if someone wants access to the e-mail on our servers, they have to hand a subpoena to either Jason or me personally. Plus, given that we have redundancy on the signal, if someone decided to cut my line, I can be up and running somewhere else within hours, since my data is not at the mercy of some IT drone at an ISP.

A post from Professor Nicholas Johnson:

Even the roughest cut at the question shows that substantial swath of the Black community would reject Whitlock’s thesis. National polling by the Pew Research Center recently asked,  “What do you think is more important – to protect the right of Americans to own guns, or to control gun ownership?” Fifty-four percent of whites and 30 percent of Blacks said it was more important to protect gun rights. Respondents were also asked “Should States and Localities be able to pass laws banning handguns?” 64 percent of Blacks said yes and 30 percent said no.  Based on these results, Whitlock must conclude that a third of the Black community are Klan sympathizers.  And that actually is the least absurd implication of his “analysis.”

And that’s only looking at national surveys with very small samples of blacks. Read the whole thing. He goes on to plug his upcoming law review, which I have read a draft of. It’s quite good and I look forward to it coming out:

Whitlock’s commentary is also problematic at another level that I elaborate in detail in my forthcoming article, Firearms Law and The Black Community:An Assessment Of The Modern Orthodoxy (Connecticut Law Review) and a forthcoming book based on that research, “Negros with Guns: The Dual Tradition of Non-Violent Social Change and Individual Self-Defense (Prometheus).  This work explains that the basic premise of the modern gun control movement – that people should rely on government for personal security- is wildly at odds with the Black experience in America. No group in the nation has better reason to doubt the competency and benevolence of the state. For most of the Black experience in America, the state has been an overt menace.

This is going to be an important new work for waging the culture war against gun control.

NRA has attended some meetings, and it would seem ATF is poised. This must be what Wayne has meant by “It’s going to come fast, and hard.” They are taking public comments until December 31st. I’d suggest sending something, even if it’s not remarkably thoughtful. Let them hear from us.

Jacob notes that the so-called Independent Democratic Conference left microstamping out of their agenda, and notes some hand wringing among Democrats. Maybe there’s a chance to stop this.

UPDATE: A bill has been introduced. I guess we’ll see if it goes anywhere.

Governor Quinn’s veto of a bill that would allow mail order ammo shipments to FOID holders in the Land of Lincoln has been soundly overridden by the legislator. Remember that he issued an “Amendatory Veto,” which turned the pro-gun bill around to be an assault weapons ban. This represents an utter repudiation of that.

Let me just say that rumors of our demise has been greatly exaggerated.

Jim Geraghty has noticed what most of us have been dealing with forever any time we have contact with activists in the gun control movement: they collectively place the blame for every act of horrific violence at our feet as if we’re the people cause such violence:

Okay, once and for all: Enough with this ‘we’re all to blame, we must all struggle to prevent tragedy’ bullcrap. Because none of us had anything to do with the actions of Jovan Belcher. You and I and every other reader of this newsletter and about 99.999 percent of the American people prevent these sorts of tragedies every day . . . by not committing them, and by never seriously contemplating considering them. We are not all ticking time bombs, one stressful day away from committing mass murder. If we were, civilization would collapse.

The rant continues. I encourage you to read the whole thing, and sign up for the Morning Jolt (Note: NR will hit you with some e-mail ads every once in a while, but not nearly often enough to be obnoxious.). Geraghty also notes this kind of collectivist blame is a common theme in Obama’s rhetoric, noting “Now we see what ‘never waste a crisis’ means: never let any horrific act go unattributed to your political foes.”

… and wondered the same thing. I think before you poll someone, you should probably do a few leader questions to try to successfully ascertain whether the person being polled has any idea what you’re talking about. “Socialism, that’s like, when you’re social and promote being social, right? Oh yeah, I support that.” But I suppose it doesn’t look very good if you release a poll showing that only 30% of Americans have any idea of what socialism even is.

NRA is trying to push people to call on the Sportsman Act of 2012, which would destroy at least one avenue for the EPA to regulate ammunition.

You can make an AK-47 receiver from a shovel with common household tools. I think I’ve seen Kyber pass AKs with shovel handles as a stock, which makes me wonder if they use the same technique to make their AK receivers.

And it’s not just gun control that’s a ridiculous, fruitless endeavor. Explosives regulations are just about as bad, given that you can make boomerite from ice packs.