Category: Gun Rights

The Atlanta-Journal Constitution says that gun violence is more serious than the swine flu.  Let’s see here, gun violence kills about 14,000 people a year.  During a typical flu season, it’s estimated that 30,000 – 50,000 people die from flu.  Models of a pandemic flu strain show deaths in the range of anywhere from 209,000 to 1.9 million.

That’s a considerably larger potential problem space than gun violence.  If the Atlanta-Journal and Constitution wants to shill for the Brady Campaign, they can at least do a little research.

From an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette talking about Obama and Rendell driving gun sales up:

“The president believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms,” an official said in an e-mailed statement. “His administration is committed to protecting the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns while stopping firearms traffickers and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and others prohibited from owning them.”

But it’s safe to say that many gun owners don’t trust the president.

You don’t say!  I can’t possibly imagine why that would be.

The language is now available Thomas for Lautenberg’s gun show bill.  What’s interesting is that it doesn’t target private sales in general, but targets only gun shows.  In my opinion, it is intended to destroy gun shows, or at least seriously reduce their numbers, and frustrate being able to put them on.  Let’s take a look:

1. A gun show, under this law, is defined as an event where more than 20% of vendors are selling firearms, where there are more than 10 people selling firearms, and when there are more than 50 firearms offered for sale.   This will probably cause flea markets and any place that’s not a licensed gun show to ban people from selling guns.
2. Gun show promoters have to register with the attorney general according to regulations and fees defined by him.  They could make the fee 100,000 dollars.  The bill does not stipulate a fee.  This is entirely unacceptable.
3. Anyone selling a gun at a gun show would have to show photo ID, be entered into a ledger, and be required to sign off on their requirements under this chapter.  This is true even if you’re just exhibiting a gun.  You don’t have to be selling it.  The promoter would keep the ledger, but would be required to keep it for as long as the attorney general stipulates.
4. All transfers would be required to be transferred through a federally licensed dealer. It is a crime both on the transferors and transferees part for not doing so.  Federal Firearms Licensees will be required to enter details about the transaction into a bound book of some kind.  The bill also stipulates a separate form other than 4473, it seems. This new federal form will be reported to ATF.  They won’t require any identifying information about the transferees.  Multiple handgun purchase forms are required for these transactions.
5. FFLs who transfer a firearm at a show will have to include a few transfer report form, separate from the current paperwork that records that a transfer has taken place.  What?
6. Penalties go up to five years for doing a private transfer at a gun show, that goes for promoters who don’t do everything right too.
7. Penalties of up to five years in prison are also added on to dealers who knowingly make a false record.

This law is aimed squarely at making gun shows so legally burdensome that no one in their right mind would organize one, and creating new criminal penalties for dealers who keep bad records. This must be absolutely opposed.  It looks like our opponents, rather than going for the whole private sale caboodle, have decided to specifically target gun shows.

Remember, in terms of organization, gun shows are for us what churches are to religious conservatives.  If they shut down gun shows, or make them entirely too legally burdensome to operate, they shut down a key locus of our ability to politically organize.  That’s exactly what the intent of this bill is.  Our opponents may be on the ropes, but they aren’t stupid.  It can’t be allowed to pass.

UPDATE: NRA offers its interpretation of this bill, saying it will do, among other things, make Camp Perry into a gun show.  This is not an unreasonable interpretation of the law.  Also:

If you are at home with a collection of fifty or more firearms, it would be a five-year felony to “offer” or “exchange” a single gun — even between family or friends — unless you first registered with the BATFE and paid a fee, the amount of which would be at BATFE’s discretion.

Checking back with the language of the bill, this is indeed the case.  There is no exception for homes.

UPDATE: More from NRA:

Even talking about a gun at an “event” could be seen as an “offer” to sell a gun. Even if you are not a dealer, but you display a gun at a gun show, and then months later sell the gun to someone you met at the show, you would be subject to the same requirements as if you had completed the sale at the gun show.

This is true.  It makes no distinction for venue.  If you make an offer to sell at any “event” or “gun show”, then later transfer them somewhere else, you’re still a felon.  Here’s the real zinger.  If you went to a “gun show” and offered to sell an SKS to your buddy while at the guns show, then a month later went to an FFL and did the transfer, with background check, 4473, and everything else, sorry, you’re still a felon, because you didn’t fill out the extra gun show transfer paperwork!

Folks, Frank Lautenberg has been in the Senate a long time.  He knows how to write legislation.  This is meant to put gun owners, where, in his mind, we belong — in federal prison.

The Guardian went through all the police records for England and Wales and put them in a spreadsheet.  Looks like there are about 129 thousand rifles, and about 549 thousand shotguns legally owned in those two countries.  That’s a very low level of gun ownership considering the combined population of England and Wales is 53 million.

You also see this in states that have licensng of gun owners, such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, which have very low levels of gun ownership by American standards.  Once you get that nose under the tent, it reduces our numbers, and thus reduces the constitutency willing to fight for more reasonable gun laws (reasonable by our standards, not theirs).

Try getting someone into shooting when it requires dealing with the police for months in order to get approved.  You can do it, but it becomes a lot harder.  We have one air gun shooter who’s been borrowing other people’s guns.  He’s from New Jersey.  To get one there, you have to go through the whole permitting process, including getting permission from the police first.  It takes months, fingerprints, and a lot of paperwork and hassle.

Even the agents are calling for it now.

From Clayton Cramer over on Volokh’s comment thread about the VPC deception:

I have this fantasy of a world where gun rights scholars get to work full-time at it, and gun control advocates have day jobs to slow them down.

I’m sure Clayton has even less free time than I do.  I say this still at work at close to eight because taking a day off on Tuesday to go to Harrisburg put me way behind at a critical time for our company.  I’m missing Silhouette tonight, which doesn’t make me happy.

Yesterday we covered the incident with the Milwaukee Police Cheif in Wisconsin.  Now it looks like we have another media relations issue brewing here in Pennsylvania with some of our open carry activists over a planned picnic.  Reporting in the Hazleton Standard Speaker:

The gun rights group that held a picnic in Hazle Township Community Park last year in a public demonstration of their right to openly carry firearms is planning a spring picnic at the park.

This time, they’ve selected a date that they believe will guarantee a large public crowd.

Members and supporters of the Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association have scheduled their picnic for May 16 – the same date as the local American Red Cross’ Celebration of Life Walk, which is held annually at the township park on American Armed Forces Day.

The double date is not a coincidence, the gun owners say.

They make it sound like it was intentional, but it wasn’t.  I confirmed on the thread at PAFOA that they scheduled their picnic that date before they knew about the Red Cross.  The problem is, once they knew about it:

The small and large pavilions are both being rented by the American Red Cross, as it seems they hold an annual run/walk at the park every Armed Forces day. This is one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and take the other pavilion, as it will give us some great exposure to the many people who will no doubt be there for the other activities going on.

And then this:

Red Cross Walk/Run… Yep… they walk through the entire park, but when they pass by the middle pavilion, they run!

Which was dutifully picked up on by the media, and reported.  They also reported this:

Do I have to carry, or open carry if I come?
No. There is no requirement that you carry, or to carry in any particular manner if you do. However, because of the holiday (Armed Forces Day), and The Red Cross walk/run in the park, we believe this will be an excellent opportunity to portray gun owners and carriers in a positive light to the general public. Because of this great opportunity, we are encouraging folks to open carry if they are comfortable doing so, but again, you are absolutely welcome regardless of your decision on if/how you carry.

It would seem that when this story hit the media, a lot of groups participating in the Red Cross walk freaked out and said they would pull out.  Red Cross is now suggesting they will cancel the event.

Whatever the intent of this picnic, and I do believe the intent was originally just to have a picnic, the story now in the media is “Gun owners distrupt Red Cross veterans benefit event.”  It’s not fair, but that’s the situation, and things said on a public forum fed right into that narrative.  Being a gun rights activist will make you enemies, especially in the media, and if you don’t have a plan, they’ll pretty quickly make you look like jackasses.

Open Carry needs to be a casual thing.  If a bunch of PAFOA members want to get together and plan a picnic, great.  If someone people want to carry openly, no problem there.  It’s not illegal in this Commonwealth.  You have a right to do it.  But as soon as you make Open Carry into a form of overt activism, as soon as you being salivating over the chance to expose your guns to a bunch of kids and veterans, you’re going to give the media a chance to smear you, and by association all gun owners.

They gay rights movement didn’t succeed because of gay pride parades (NSFW, or anywhere really).  If anything, it succeeds despite the fringes of its movement, not because of it.  Gays won acceptance because they came out of the closet and started talking to people about it.  Not because they got half naked and put on leather and got in everyone’s face.  I am generally supportive of equal rights for gays, but I don’t like having someone’s sexuality waved in front of my face.   Most people feel that way about this and other issues.

If this had just been a picnic, there never would have been a controversy, even if it was known by organizers and attendees that people would show up open carrying.  My stance on open carry is just do it.  Making plans to shove it in people’s face isn’t going to make you friends, and gives plenty of ammunition to our enemies, as we have seen here.