Guns – Page 187 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Monday News Links

Trying to do a little more blogging over the weekend to make up for being busy during the week. We will be taking a break from the blog somewhat during the holiday weekend, but given how dry the news cycle has been, you might not notice. Seems a collapse of the health care system is something people really want to pay attention to!

Vancouver bans doorknobs. No, seriously. But notice how the nanny staters have infiltrated even Popular Science? If your house has knobs, and you want levers, it’s an easy thing to negotiate at sale. It’s cheap. A few hundred bucks would do my whole house. But I hate levers because they get caught on things.

“If you ignore the adrenaline dumps and the blood pressure spikes this is a very, very good book.” – Joe Huffman on “Emily Gets her Gun.” More here.

More on the Melissa Bachman controversy: Stupidity is a luxury.

Outgoing NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly blind to his gun control hypocrisy.

Bigotry on parade. I would be ashamed to have such low quality followers. Not that we don’t have intolerant ignoramuses on our side, but I’ve never agreed with running things in such a way as to attract them.

The gun control groups hit a new low when it comes to deception: when you can’t achieve, just lie about it.

Surprising strength in the GOPÂ with female hispanic candidates.

Via Instapundit, a tale of an SR-71 pilot who survived his aircraft breaking up at 78,000 feet and Mach 3. Well worth reading. It was amazing they put that aircraft together with what was essentially 1950s technology.

Why opposition to gun control has increased. I think there’s more to it than that.

Canadians get fun toys we don’t because in some ways their import laws are less strict than ours.

Against Basic Tenets of American Justice

I do believe that it is, in fact, a basic tenet of not only American justice, but of English justice, that when one is found not guilty of a charge, that means all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizenship are fully restored. Sadly, it seems our opponents in the gun control movement don’t even believe in that:

The irony of all of this is that he has already killed someone with a gun but he got his guns and his rights back after the trial. Why? Because that is what the gun rights extremists want. They think it’s perfectly fine for someone like George Zimmerman to be able to possess and carry lethal weapons around even after that person has already killed someone with a gun.

He was found not guilty of the crime of murder by a jury of his peers. So yes, that is what I want. I want people who are found not guilty to not be punished by the law as if they had been. If that makes me a “gun rights extremist,” I’ll wear the banner proudly. I tend to think that just makes me a believer in the basic tenets of justice and human rights.

Regardless of what kind of trouble Zimmerman has found himself in since his acquittal (to me it almost seems like he wants to go to jail) he has not yet been found guilty of any crime serious enough to warrant deprivation of rights. Do the leaders of the gun control movement really want to argue that people found not guilty of crimes should be punished anyway? Do you really want to argue that someone found not guilty of a crime should be found guilty anyway, just because you know he’s guilty? If you think that, pardon me if I do question your patriotism, and belief in the basic legal institutions that have served this country for more than two centuries.

Knives and the Second Amendment

The law review article by Clayton Cramer, Joe Olson, and Dave Kopel, arguing that knives are just as much deserving of Second Amendment protection as firearms, has just hit the printers. I’d also throw chemical defensive sprays, tasers, and electric stun guns into that mix eventually as well, but one step at a time. Knives are probably among the oldest arms human beings recognize, and currently have far less legal protection than firearms. I can carry a Glock 19 into the City of Philadelphia and there’s nothing the corrupt politicians can do about it. But they absolutely could pinch for for carrying a 3 inch folding knife. Firearms regulation enjoy statewide preemption. Knives and other weapons? Not so much.

Hunting is Doomed, Exhibit B

Despite not being a hunter myself, I’ve “unliked” a lot of pages on Facebook this week over the outrage regarding Melissa Bachman’s South African safari. It’s not that I think people can’t have different opinions about hunting, but at least know what it is you’re really opposing before getting worked up and outraged. I’ve also just hit my limit for people who preach tolerance and understanding, but who then turn around and display the opposite out of ignorance. My patience for it has worn out. Continuing on my assertion that hunting is in a lot of trouble, I bring you this from the comments of George Takei’s post joining in the Bachman hate:

This is the old “I’m a gun owner, but ….” just in another context. This kind of attitude is what’s going to kill hunting, because hunters still think it’s OK to argue about what hunting is and isn’t. This guy has just giving close to 6000 people, on a page “liked” by millions, moral cover for their outrage at a fellow hunter.Â Hunters will sell the animal rights movement the rope they will use to hang them. If you want to understand why in the shooting community, we’re so quick to knife traitors, this is why. Hunting has to develop the same kind of message discipline if they want their pastime to survive.

Hunting pays for the vast majority of wildlife conservation in this world, and hunters have been at the forefront of preserving nature and the environment. It was the famous hunter and president, Teddy Roosevelt, who helped establish the North American model for wildlife conservation. Hunting has a great story to tell. More importantly, it has a great green story to tell. It’s story has great appeal across a broad spectrum of non-hunters. But how can hunting tell its story when hunters are busier throwing other hunters under the bus than they are fighting for hunting’s future?

UPDATE: Why, for instance, did it take a non-hunter to put out a spectacular defense like this?

NSSF Considered Leaving Newtown

This is interesting. According to an AP interview with NSSF’s CEO, they considered moving their Newtown headquarters where they have been for 20 years in response to the shooting there.

The article says that even though they didn’t get political until the gun control proposals that would hurt the industry were brought up, their employees who were also impacted by the shooting were still bothered by neighbors who complained about their presence.

Looks Gimmicky

SayUncle has a video highlighting a new AR-15 trigger system. It looks to me like a semi-auto trigger, just one where the characteristics of the trigger change if you switch it to the fun setting. My guess is that the switch makes it a hair trigger, which is easier to fire faster. If you look at the video, it looks like the shooter is squeezing for each round fired.

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just put a good trigger in your AR, though. The primary benefit, that I can see, is that it allow you to look all cool to the other dudes at the range by flipping your selector to the “auto” setting. The marketing seems to suggest this special trigger will make you a total high-speed, low drag, badass. Because of this, I expect it will sell well.

Philadelphia Bans 3D Gun Printing

It is now illegal to hit “Print …” in Philadelphia, if the thing you loaded was a design for a firearm.

Which is interesting, because the author of the bill, Kenyatta Johnson, isnâ€™t aware of of any local gun-printing 3-D printers.Â â€Itâ€™s all pre-emptive,â€ says Johnsonâ€™s director of legislation Steve Cobb. â€œItâ€™s just based upon internet stuff out there.â€

It’s not “preemptive,” it’s just stupid. It’s up there in terms of ignorance with burning witches. It’s not going to preempt anybody, because no one is going to be dissuaded from hitting “Print …” if they are seriously intending to cause harm. It is also quite arguably, and ironically, given Johnson’s quote, preempted by state law banning cities and local communities from regulating firearms.

It is not unusual for people who don’t understand new technology to be frightened by it. That goes double if you’re a politician. The same primitive fears of the unknown were responsible for all manner of laws when the automobile first appeared, or really any new technology first appeared on the scene. Life among the barbarians, I suppose.

New Rules on Lost and Stolen Guns?

Apparently the Obama Administration are drafting new rules, along with ATF, who know a thing or two about losing track of guns, I hear:

Currently, gun dealers with a federal license are required to tell federal agents after they discover a firearm has gone missing, but they arenâ€™t required to do routine checks.

â€œThey can discover a gun missing today and have no idea when it went missing, which really makes that information useless to law enforcement,â€ said Chelsea Parsons, associate director of crime and firearms policy at the Center for American Progress.

The White House office has 90 days to review the proposed rule before releasing it to the public and allowing them to comment.

My guess is they will require inventory be taken on some ridiculous and burdensome regular interval. Anything to harass more dealers out of the business. What’s interesting it that appropriations riders prevent ATF from implementing such a rule. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Using the Ballot

Initiative 594 is gaining in Washington State. This would enact a Schumer-style ban on handing a firearm to someone else for purposes of instruction, etc, without a background check. Ace of Spades had a very astute observation on this phenomena, only in this case in the context of Obamacare:

It has long been my contention that it makes no sense to poll questions simply about the “goodies” of Obamacare, like “do you support free health care for the poor or sick.”Â Everyone’s in favor of that.Â Including myself.

Yes, I’m in favor of that, and so are all of you –Â if we do not ask the question in connection with the costs.Â Of courseÂ I’d like everyone to have free health care; in fact, since we’re asking about things I justÂ want, I’d strongly prefer to live in a disease-free world where no one ever gets sick at all.

But questions of policy are only answerable in consideration of the costs. Do I favor a manned mission to Mars? You bet I do. Do I favor such a mission, if it costs $60 billion over ten years? No, I don’t.

And for a polling company to ask the question without asking about my sensitivity to the cost of it, and then to report me as being in favor of it, is misleading and stupid.

You can only gauge someone’s actual support for a policy by informing that person of the likely costs they’ll be forced to bear to have that policy. But for four years,Â virtually everyone in a position of responsibility sought to hide those costs from the public.

That’s the problem with this issue as well. Polling on background checks amounts to no more than an affirmation that people don’t want criminals to get their hands on guns. But public polling on this issue never speaks of the costs of doing so, such as not being able to engage in firearms instruction in some circumstances, going to jail if you lend a rifle or shotgun to a friend to go hunting or shooting, or being unable to leave guns with a friend if you’re experiencing some kind of personal crisis. I 594 is likely to pass, because like public polling, the ballot question will never explain the costs.

Federal Ban on Printing Guns?

Chucky Schumer wants to put the cat back in the bag:

“If the legislation is not renewed, individuals will be able to easily carry a 3D plastic gun through a metal detector and gain access to an airplane, school, sporting event, courthouse or other government buildings,” Schumer said in a statement.

And how is this going to stop that? This is about as effective as a “no guns” sign. The cat is out of the bag here, and it’s not going back in.

Schumer raised alarm bells, saying anyone with $1,000 and an internet connection can access those CAD files and make their own guns, making it too easy to bypass security at airports, sporting events or any other venue that relies on metal detectors or x-ray machines for security.

And that will still be true even after you pass a law. So what is this going to do? Other than land people with a little too much curiosity for their own good in prison. Is it really so hard to understand that people intent on bypassing airport screening tend to be what we call “highly motivated” criminals, and are thus the least likely to be dissuaded by the fact that there’s a law against hitting “Print”

h/t Jacob