Category: Gun Rights

Hillary Clinton is being replaced by a pro-gun Congresswoman from upstate New York.  Kirsten Gillibrand.  That’s one more vote for us, and one less vote for them.  I’m also glad that upstate New York will have one of its own in the Senate, which it’s lacked since the 1970s.  I do hope Ms. Gillibrand won’t disappoint.

I think Rustmeister has some good advice here for how to talk to people about Assault Weapons, and suggests a sort of “30 second commerical” to get a conversation going.  I think if you generally appear reasonable, and approach the topic from an angle that can be understood by a person who’s probably not familiar with the topic, other than what they see on TV and hear in the media.

Pro-Gun Progressive appears to be remaining one of the few people to possess an unrestricted Maryland carry license.

There’s expected to be significant information released about the David Olofson case, so tune in.

Rumor has it that Patterson is considering a pro-gun state senator to replace Hillary Clinton in the US Senate:

However, Gillibrand, a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights, is still on the radar screen, and that worries Jackie Hilly, NYAGV’s executive director.

“I don’t think she represents most New Yorkers on gun-control issues,” Hilly said Wednesday.

Gillibrand, a Democrat who easily won a second term last year, has received an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association, which opposes many gun-control measures. Hilly said the rating shows Gillibrand is out of step with most New Yorkers.

I think she represents far more New Yorkers than you do, Jackie Hilly.  I’m willing to bet the number of NRA members in New York State far exceeds the members of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.

If the Great Obama Gun Rush were just a phenomena of us die-hard gun owners stocking up on a few extra AR-15s to tuck away, you wouldn’t see stories like this:

Instead of waiting, more people are exercising their right to personal protection.

“I know Obama said he wouldn’t take away any of our gun rights but that remains to be seen,” said Glen Hirsch, who was buying a gun on a recent day.

In Springfield, concealed carry courses are booked full through April.

“I want to be able to have it when I need it,” said Kevin Hale of Aurora.

Instructors even added Sunday sessions.

“The demand for this course has pretty much tripled over what it was a year ago,” said Randy Gibson, a concealed-carry weapons class instructor.

The demand increased from 381 applications in 2006 to more than 1,100 last year; 12 percent of the applicants are women.

We die-hards already have our concealed carry licenses.  This means Obama is minting new gun owners.  That stands to reason.  Before Bill Clinton, I expressed passing support of the Second Amendment, but I was not a die hard, nor an activist, had little exposure to firearms, and did not own one.  Bill Clinton made me a gun owner, and an activist for the cause.  Obama will make the next generation if he’s not careful.  It’s already happening.

Stu Bykofsky, who deserves our thanks for getting the other side of this story out to the newspaper reading public, has a column in the Philadelphia Daily News defending Colosimo’s Gun Shop:

Colosimo; his wife, Mary Elizabeth; and his lawyer, Daniel Del Collo Jr., had two four-hour meetings with the group at Colosimo’s shooting range.

Mary Elizabeth baked cookies and the protesters cooked up a “10-point voluntary code” that they wanted Colosimo to sign. Gathering’s laudable goal is to reduce “straw” purchases, by which guns are bought legally by someone with a clean record, then illegally sold or bartered to criminals.

At the first meeting, Gathering brought along someone from CeaseFire New Jersey. At the second meeting, it brought along a couple of lawyers from the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Colosimo says that the group portrayed itself as “faith-based,” and that he felt backstabbed when it dragged in out-of-town lawyers.

Well, a while ago, I said that no good would come of any gun shop meeting with this group.  Now you know.  It’s not a negotiation, it’s a shakedown.  Colosimo already did 9 out of their 10 points.  But he refused to sign on to a database to track his customers.

The number is high, Colosimo says, not because he has done anything wrong, but because he has sold “hundreds of thousands” of guns over the decades. An infinitesimal fraction were used in crimes.

Blaming Colosimo for gun crime is like blaming Mayor Nutter for more murderers in Philadelphia than in Narberth. The larger the pool, the more likely you’ll find bad people in it.

Gathering, which picketed Colosimo’s for several days, boasts that Wal-Mart, the mammoth merchandiser that sells more guns than anyone, signed the 10-point code. That’s a red herring because Wal-Mart sells no handguns, except in Alaska. Everywhere else it sells rifles and shotguns, which are not the problem firearms.

If you want to know why I called for a Zumboing of Wal-Mart and any other gun shop that caves to these thugs, this is why.  Wal-Mart will be used as the stick to beat other gun shops into submission.  “You will submit, because Wal-Mart did.”   Colosimo is principled enough to tell them to get lost, but not all gun shop owners are so willing.  A warning to any gun shop owner: do not meet with these people.  Direct all correspondence from them to your attorney.  They are not out to negotiate, they are out to shut you down.

Dave Hardy has linked to this most excellent law review by Nicholas J. Johnson called “Imagining Gun Control in America.  Understanding the Remainder Problem” that I think everyone should read.  Here’s a sample, discussion how banning private sales won’t facilitate a solution to the “remainder” problem, the remainder being the guns that don’t get turned in in defiance of a confiscation order (which is to say, most of them):

Requiring private sales at gun shows to be routed through a dealer might lay the foundation for regulating secondary-market sales. But we know that sales by FFLs are only about half of all gun transfers, and sales at gun shows are only a fraction of those. With nearly half of gun transfers involving private trades out of the existing inventory, people who complain about the gun show loophole can really only be satisfied by a flat ban on private transfers―e.g., requiring all transfers go through an FFL, who will route the buyer through the NICS.

Competing impulses complicate projections about defiance of rules that would introduce the government as a filter between all private buyers and sellers. The defiance impulse that confounds registration and confiscation operates here for obvious reasons. Channeling secondary sales through a government filter brings no-paper guns back into the system. Indeed, this type of system would be one way to confront the remainder problem that otherwise impairs attempts at gun registration. If all secondary sales were required to go through FFLs and all FFL transactions were recorded, eventually, in theory, most guns would be registered. However, where registration and confiscation are background possibilities, the impulse to resist secondary sales restrictions will be similar to the impulse to resist registration and confiscation. The no-paper gun will continue to have premium value. People will pay extra for them and have powerful incentives to retain and acquire them in various ways. These incentives will fuel defiance of secondary sales restrictions.

That is absolutely spot on, and why these schemes will not serve their intended effect. Get this, gun control folks, we know your end game. We have no intention of playing along with your little scheme. My experience with the gun community here in Pennsylvania suggests that non-compliance for our ban on private transfers of pistols is exceedingly high; most people don’t even know about the restriction, and are shocked and outraged when informed the law actually makes them felons for selling a pistol to a friend or shooting buddy.  A federal ban, especially in states where local authorities have no incentive or intention to enforce federal gun laws, is even more likely to be defied.  The paper trails for the guns meant to be subject to these regulations won’t be worth the paper they aren’t printed on.

Monica Yant-Kinny thinks the 5 people who got themselves arrested for illegally and defiantly trespassing on the property of another are heros:

Some reputation. Colosimo’s “values profits over the lives of others,” City Solicitor Shelley Smith wrote in a legal filing last year. “At best, Colosimo’s knowingly continued its abysmally poor business practices after repeatedly being notified by ATF of its guns flowing into the hands of criminals. At worst, Colosimo’s knowingly traffics in crime guns.”

If this were true, Colosimo would be in jail, and the ATF would have revoked his Federal Firearms License.  The fact is the man sells a lawful product under regulation of both the federal and state governments, which allow him to keep operating, not because of lack of oversight, but because he cannot be held responsible because some of his firearms through illegal transfers or theft end up on the streets in the hands of criminals.  What is so hard to understand about this that Monica Yant-Kinney and the editorial board of the Philadelphia Daily News find so hard to understand.   I can understand five deluded and misguided souls believing that Colosimos is responsible for this, rather then the people who rob, murder, and assault, but we should absolutely expect better from journalists.