Category: Gun Rights

Greg Rotz had a meeting with his local sheriff.  Not the guy who revoked his license to carry, that sheriff retired.  This is the new sheriff.  I link to this because I think it’s a great way to do activism:

In the end he said I was glad I took the time to come see him. He asked if he could keep all of the documentation I presented to him. I told him that was why I brought them. He asked if I had a card. I told him I did not have a personal card, but gave him a PAFOA card, and he wrote my name/number/e-mail on the back. I told him we were not a PAC, and were not trying to offer money in exchange for policy changes, etc. We are not making demands. We just want everyone (citizen and LEO alike) to know what the laws are, so they can be followed. I also asked if he would be willing to attend a local social gathering, and he said he would do so. I promised to keep him updated as plans began to form.

I think you can get more mileage out of a soft sell than you can walking in and making demands.  While they are public servants, they are also people, and they will tend to listen better if you’re treating them well.

One of the great injustices of the Lautenberg amendment, that prohibited people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from possessing firearms, is that it applied retroactively to people who were completely unaware their convictions imposed a firearms disability on them when, in many cases, they plead guilty, because the charge was just a misdemeanor, rather than spending the money to fight it.

Apparently the Supreme Court is planning to hear a case on this.  I think punishments applied to criminals applied retroactively does violate ex-post facto.  Will the judges agree?  I hope so, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

UPDATE: Dave Hardy has more details here.  It seems the question at hand is a bit different than I thought.  The question is whether the offense needs to have a domestic violence component to it, or whether it merely means that any violent offense against a domestic partner applies.

This isn’t a rule that will affect her properly disarmed constituents, so I don’t get why she cares:

“I never thought I’d see the day when the Interior Department of the United States would allow weapons – including concealed weapons – to be carried freely in our national parks and wildlife refuges. To me, this is appalling, and puts both people and animals at risk.

Don’t worry Diane, California prohibits guns in parks.  You won’t be able to carry there, since you’re so upset about this.

This change makes no sense. It would create an incoherent, ineffective, and inconsistent patchwork of policies – across the country, and in some places within the same national parks. For example, Death Valley National Park is in California and Nevada. California prohibits loaded and accessible weapons in its state parks. Nevada does not. So which state law would apply at Death Valley National Park?

It’s pretty simple.  The portion of the park in Nevada follows Nevada law.  The portion in California follows California law.  I thought that was pretty clear in the rule.

On training requirements for license holders in the state:

Recent complaints to state officials pointed out that almost anyone who wants to carry a handgun to the movies, mall or church can do so. The shortcomings they cited include training that allows firing bullets without gunpowder, and passing students for merely pulling the trigger once or twice without ever loading or unloading a handgun.

Quickie permit classes had become so common, the National Rifle Association threatened this month to fire any NRA-certified instructor who didn’t use real guns to teach students in Florida.

Here in Pennsylvania, we don’t have any training requirement, so pretty clearly we must have innocent bystanders and children being shot on a regular basis, right?  Second, NRA is just the certifying body.  Instructors are not employees.  NRA could revoke their credentials, but not fire them.

Shoddy training became an issue this month, more than a year after a retired military officer first complained to Gov. Charlie Crist about classes at gun shows.

“You can only train a corpse in 3 hours,” Col. James K. Otto Sr., an NRA instructor from North Florida, wrote to the governor. “Our NRA certified instructors take 3 days to a week to make sure their students not only know the law but also know how to handle firearms and ammunition safely with at least a half day firing at a local range.”

And no doubt this guy wants Florida to mandate a longer training course, which he so generously offers, at a fairly high price, I’m guessing.  It doesn’t take long to teach someone to be reasonably competent with a pistol.  It can be done in 3 hours, which includes going over relevant law.  I’ve rarely encountered a new shooter who can’t shoot well enough to defend themselves if given the fundamentals.  You don’t have to be a marksman to defend yourself.  Most encounters happen in under 5 yards.

Hammer, a former NRA president and one of the state’s most powerful lobbyists, alerted NRA national headquarters. Within days, every NRA-certified instructor in Florida was warned they would lose their credentials for not using real guns with real bullets in class.

They should be cracking down on people who aren’t allowing students live fire.  That is not up to NRA standards for training, and those people should lose their certifications if they are doing it.  But it doesn’t point to a problem with Florida law.

“In Florida, where you’re permitting them to legally carry a loaded, hidden handgun in a crowded situation where people may be running all over the place and then you’re expecting them with no training to hit their mark — that’s crazy,” said Brian Malte, the [Brady Campaign’s] director of state legislation and politics. “Law-enforcement officers . . . miss their mark 80 percent of the time even after all the training they get.”

Cops who are good shots are good shots because they take their trade seriously, and train on their own.  The same with CCL holders.  The training is not meant to make people competent marksmen, it’s meant to give them a start.  Competent marksmanship only comes with practice.

It seems air Marshals are having trouble with it:

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.

And yet this asshole, and these people, are doing everything they can to apply this list to gun purchases?  I guess that’ll mean no guns for the guys in the Air Marshal program then.  I guess they’ll just have to use harsh language on the real terrorists.

Hat Tip to Instapundit

According to Dave Hardy, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals apparently knows how to read the plain English the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was written in.

Take a good long look at this list.  They want to ban rifles like the Ruger 10/22 and the Anschutz model 525 Deluxe.  Granted, this bill is probably not going anywhere, but it’s a useful exercise to see exactly what these people would get away with if they had the chance.

But we’re all just paranoid nuts I guess.  They’ll never ban our guns, right?

Under Bill Clinton’s administration, NICS records were being illegally kept by the FBI.  This practice was ended under the Bush administration.  Frank Lautenberg, the senator from the state that has pretty much killed lawful gun ownership, wants to let the FBI keep those records for six months.  Ten years if you’re on the terrorist watch list.

New Jersey has, for the most part, pretty effectively extinguished the culture of lawful and responsible gun ownership.  Most gun shops there have closed, along with most ranges.  Criminal gun ownership is still, of course, quite fashionable in the Garden State.  California is now heading down the same slippery slope.  Hunters and Shooters who don’t think any of this stuff matters, because they “aren’t coming after my gun” need to realize that the shooting sports are an ecosystem, and without the rest of us to keep it healthy, it dies.  They don’t need to come after anyone’s gun if there’s nowhere to buy them and nowhere to shoot.