It’s nice that Bloomy has lost several mayors to pressure from gun owners, but it’s really nice to actually defeat one in an election.
Category: Guns
Having Real Friends Helps
Ahab notes that Rudy makes both he and Paul Helmke nervous, but for opposite reasons:
My concern with Rudy as a presidential candidate isn’t that he is switching to pro-gun side of the debate, but rather that I feel like he’s just saying what he feels he need to say to woo pro-gun Republican votes. I worry that if he were elected, he would immediately flop right back to his NYC gun control methods.
If Rudy wants to serve a second term, he wouldn’t flip back.  But I don’t think that honestly matters all that much. I would take Rudy over Hillary, if only because Rudy will know where his bread gets buttered.
The real problem with Rudy is he’s not a real friend of gun owners, no matter what he tells you. We already have an example of this in our current President, who has signed some good bills for us, and put people on the Supreme Court that will likely vote to uphold the second amendment, but the gun issue is politics for Bush, not passion.
This couldn’t be any clearer than in ATF’s actions while Bush has been president. There has been no attempt by the administration to bring this agency under any semblance of control, either fiscally or focusing them on their proper mission of going after criminals.  This is why having real friends in the white house matters.  There’s too many behind the scenes, under the radar ways an unfriendly administration can screw gun owners, even if their public face is very friendly. Ahab is correct to be worried, because having real friends in the White House matters.
Another ATF Audit for Red’s
Looks like the ATF has paid Red’s Trading Post another visit for rubber glove treatment. Upset about how Red’s Trading Post is being treated? Contact the Office of Inspector General at the DOJ. Be polite, but make sure they know you believe ATFs actions in regard to Red’s are excessive. I will post what I’ll be sending along to them later this evening.
Also, it wouldn’t hurt to contact your Congress Critter in regards to reforming the law to deal with these abuses. There were several bills working their way through Congress before the changeover happened in 2006. We’d all like to see the ATF abolished, but the fundamental problem is with the law, and if that isn’t fixed, the problem would just shift to another agency. The ultimate problem isn’t that there’s federal law enforcement tasked with enforcing federal gun laws, it’s that there are too many federal gun laws to enforce. Until the latter is fixed, the problem will continue.
On Blaming Pennsylvania
Scott Bach has a post responding to the increasingly more frequent statements coming from across the river that Pennsylvania’s “weak” gun laws are to blame for crime in New Jersey.
What I’d like to know is why no one blames Delaware? Delaware’s gun laws are actually less stringent than Pennsylvania’s in nearly all respects except for the issuance of concealed weapons licenses.  Delaware also shares a rather lengthy border with New Jersey.
Giuliani Endorsement?
Greg says it would make him quit NRA over it.  I also think it would be a bad idea, but temper that with the fact that a Hillary Clinton or Obama would be an utter disaster. If Rudy wants to put more originalist thinking justices on The Court, I might be willing to overlook his past if he’s running against The Hildabeast or Obama.  Run him against Richardson though, and Richardson ought to get the endorsement hands down.
Putting the Smackdown on DC
Looks like Alan Gura has decided to file for lifting the stay of mandate in Parker v. DC case, which is preventing the circuit courts ruling from having full effect. If granted, DC would no longer be able to enforce the provisions in its law as they relate to trigger locks or disassembly.
The District of Colombia is basically misrepresenting itself here before The Court. Â One has to believe that’s not going to go unnoticed, nor shine a positive light on The District’s case in the eyes of the justices.
RICO Gangs
Uncle is talking about a new senate bill GOA is alerting on that shows, once again, that GOA doesn’t know how to read legislation. Now, I’m absolutely no fan of this bill that Congress wants to pass here, mostly because I think gang activity is generally not a federal matter. But here’s what GOA is claiming about this bill:
At issue is section 215 of the bill. In essence, your family, gun shop employees, or even church bowling league would be considered an organized “gang” and subjected to draconian prison sentences if you did any of a number of things, such as:
- having a gun (loaded OR unloaded) in your glovebox as you — inevitably — drive within 1,000 feet of a school, even if you didn’t know the school was there;
- selling a gun out of your store while being entrapped in a Bloomberg-style “sting” operation;
- teaching your son to shoot without giving him a written letter of permission (which must be on his actual person), even if you are standing right behind him at the range the whole time; or,
- simply being one the 83,000 veterans whose names were illegally added to the Brady system by President Clinton (or, presumably, one of the thousands more who will be on the list if the current Veterans Disarmament bill passes), if you continued to possess a firearm.
But does it define what a gang is? Why, yes, it does:
(1) CRIMINAL STREET GANG- The term `criminal street gang’ means a formal or informal group, organization, or association of 5 or more individuals–
(A) each of whom has committed at least 1 gang crime; and
(B) who collectively commit 3 or more gang crimes (not less than 1 of which is a serious violent felony), 3 or more in separate criminal episodes (not less than 1 of which occurs after the date of enactment of the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act of 2007, and the last of which occurs not later than 5 years after the commission of a prior gang crime (excluding any time of imprisonment for that individual)).
But what is a gang crime? Surely that’s rife for abuse right?
(2) GANG CRIME- The term `gang crime’ means an offense under or State Federal law punishable by imprisonment for more than 1 year, or a felony offense under State law that is punishable by a term of imprisonment of 5 years or more in any of the following categories:
In short, if you’re not already a prohibited person, you don’t have to worry about this bill. Like I said, I have federalism concerns with this, but I don’t have concern this is going to ensnare law abiding gun owners unjustly. Once again, GOA is scaring gun owners by misrepresenting legislation.
Offending People: Let Them Go Already
I think it’s safe to say that the California Condor is a species that’s poorly adapted to life on this planet, and they probably would have gone extinct regardless of what humans did.  Especially when you read stuff like this:
At the time of human settlement of the Americas, the California Condor was widespread across North America. However, climate changes associated with the end of the last ice age and the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna led to a subsequent reduction in range and population. Prehistorically, California Condors are known from Arizona,[28] Nevada,[29] New Mexico,[30][31] and Texas.[32]
In modern times, a wide variety of causes helped lead to the condor’s decline. The condor’s fickle mating habits and resulting low birth rate combined with a late age of sexual maturity make the bird vulnerable to loss of population.
Now they blame man, and Governor Schwarzenegger is faced with whether to agree to ban lead bullets in Condor habitat. Here’s where I start getting offensive: let them go extinct already! It’s pretty clear they were on their way toward that without any help from humans, and I don’t think we should go to extremes to prolong the inevitable. Yep, sometimes I believe species should just be allowed to go extinct. You can add Pandas to that list as well.
Who Lives in Florida?
John Timoney seems to think the federal assault weapons ban actually accomplished something:
Miami Police Chief John Timoney said the 2004 expiration of the federal ban on assault weapons has triggered an “arms race” in his city.
A pity there’s never been one study that showed that. Presumably there’s been more bayonetings and fewer flash blinded shooters in Miami, but I doubt Timoney could confirm that.
“The whole thing is a friggin’ disgrace,” said Timoney, a longtime advocate of tighter gun control who has authorized patrol officers to carry high-powered, semiautomatic assault rifles like the one used Thursday to kill Miami-Dade County police Sgt. Jose Somohano.
What he won’t tell you is that police should have had access to AR-15s in their patrol cars all along, and that his department was negligent in this regard. It’s my opinion that all patrol cars need some type of center fire self-loading rifle. The AR-15 is as good a choice as any. That’s not a guarantee though. Pistols are carried because they are convenient, and work most of the time, not because they are great fight stoppers.
Twenty percent of the homicides in Miami this year have been committed with assault weapons. The number was 18 percent in 2006, up from just 4 percent in 2004, The Herald reported.
Someone who lives in Florida needs to file a request to find out how it was determined the homicide involved an “assault weapon”. Want my guess? They are counting any pistols with a magazine capacity greater than 10 as a high-powered assault weapon. We know from FBI statistics that all long gun use doesn’t even account for 2% of gun use in crime, so something is very fishy here. Get to work Florida gunnies! You can bet the press won’t bother to do their jobs.
If you’re going to write an article about guns …
… please learn the difference between bear and bare. This idea that our founding fathers would be aghast at the deadliness of modern firearms would seem to force the belief what they were playing with were pop guns. To be honest, if I had the choice between being shot at with a Glock, or a Brown Bess musket, I’d take the Glock. At similar effective ranges, the Brown Bess creates devastating, horrid wounds. Now, it’s true that it’s a lot harder to shoot up a school with a Brown Bess, but it can be easily done with 150 year old technology.