Guns – Page 213 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Balanced Article on Machine Gun Shoot

From Slate. I appreciate it when reporters legitimately make an attempt to step outside their comfort zone. Of course, at least one of the gun owners he interviewed shows why our own people are a bigger impediment to advancing gun rights than the gun control zealots. See here:

Darwin Edwards and his friend John Paskey left the Big Sandy Shoot early. The 4,000-mile round trip from Kentucky, Edwards says, was worth doing once. He says the machine gun community proves the efficacy of rigorous background checks: “Machine gun owners are one of the few groups of people who can prove they’re not felons.” Ammo remains “really just not available because of the feeding frenzy” fueled by the gun control legislation. But Edwards isn’t worried. He’s got enough ammo to last him the rest of his life. He’s deeply disappointed that the Senate didn’t pass gun control. “The majority of people in the country, including me, were in favor of that particular bill,” he says. “I don’t see how any thinking person would vote against it.”

He’s got his, so who cares, right? If only that attitude were rare as hens teeth.Â “Machine gun owners are one of the few groups of people who can prove they’re not felons.” And you know what? Despite that, they still banned them. Once they get the rest of us out of the game, we’re not going to be able to stop them when they come to confiscate your now ungrandfathered machine guns. This guy had the nerve to call other gun owners uneducated. He’s a world class fool, blind to the realities of this issue.

Gun Fun Across State Borders

The New York Rifle & Pistol Association is raising money for their legal fund to challenge the SAFE Act by raffling off a machine gun shoot for two in Pennsylvania that even includes a night at a local hotel. That’s a pretty good idea to look at surrounding states to have fun shooting events when it has been banned locally. They feature video of previous shoots by the company:

Newtown Residents Seek Guns

The Wall Street Journal isn’t just looking at the rise in gun sales since last December, they are focusing in on sales in Connecticut and permit applications in Newtown. Not surprisingly, it is on a similar track as the rest of the nation.

Third Circuit Upholds New Jersey Carry Restrictions

The case is Drake v. Filko. The third circuit has generally been terrible for the Second Amendment, and not really too surprising since although it’s major state is relatively pro-gun, the circuit judges are going to tend to be drawn from Philadelphia, and reside there.

Here, we conclude that the requirement that applicants demonstrate a â€œjustifiable needâ€ to publicly carry a handgun for self-defense qualifies as a â€œpresumptively lawful,â€ â€œlongstandingâ€ regulation and therefore does not burden conduct within the scope of the Second Amendmentâ€™s guarantee.

Wow. Talk about lazy. Because that’s totally what Heller said. So there it is folks. There is no right to carry a firearm in the State of Pennsylvania, New Jersey or Delaware under the Second Amendment as far as our federal judicial overlords are concerned. Poof! Gone. Unless the Supreme Court steps in to fix it.

Lies and Cash: MAIG’s Strategy, According Former Member

We’ve heard the stories before about how MAIG fudges on telling prospective mayors about their real agenda when they sign up. But one New York mayor says that not only did they not even mention gun policy when they signed him up via petition for safe communities, but they did not seek permission to use his name and apparently only removed it after presenting him with promises of campaign cash from Bloomberg. Highlights:

In 2009, while attending a statewide mayoral conference, I was asked to sign a â€œpetitionâ€ affirming my support for safer communities. …

The organization never asked for permission or asked for approval to use my name to promote their agenda. Never was any information disclosed to me about the organization being in favor of gun control or that they would use my position as Mayor to spend millions of dollars to try to take away the rights of legal gun owners. …

After several attempts and requests to be removed, I did finally receive a call from a representative of the organization attempting to â€œbuy me offâ€ by promising political donations in return for my continued membership.

It was not until I declined this payoff, that my name was finally removed.

Read the whole thing for a bit more that highlights just how far Bloomberg will go to continue the perception that his little group of mayors fully supports everything he signs their name to without their knowledge.

It’s Evolution! You Can’t Argue with Science

Over at Common Gunsense, Joan Peterson has been breeding a special batch of extremist ramblings lately. Like a train wreck, you can’t help but look. In this episode, she takes a position against teaching kids gun safety. She notes:

Little boys in particular seem to love shooting noises and pretend shooting at an imaginary animal or toy. It must be something in the DNA of male children ( or testosterone?). But real guns are not toys.

It’s evolution, and who can argue against evolution? It’s science! You’re not a science denier, are you Joan? I thought that was for the kinds of people who support the corporate gun lobby.

See, without weapons, humans make pretty tasty cat food, and our early ancestors and cousins wereÂ regularly preyed upon by big cats, birds and other predators until hominids evolved large enough brains to fashion weapons.Â Like most other species, our young instinctively engage in play that aids in honing critical survival skills, just like you notice in kittens. Even typical youth past times like baseball have an evolutionary angle revolving around weapon employment. If our species’ most sophisticated weapon was still the spear, young boys would still be picking up sticks and engaging in play that involved throwing them, probably at each other. It’s instinctive behavior, because humans whose children engaged in this behavior survived better than those whose didn’t, and that’s evidenced by the fact that our species, the weapon making species, is the only hominid species to survive.

The first step in bringing those aggressive instincts under control is to first acknowledge that they exist, and then teaching the young the discipline and responsibility necessary to control them, and use them in a socially responsible manner. For many boys and girls, the discipline required by shooting is a healthful outlet for what they are naturally are drawn to. Denying them the opportunity to explore that part of themselves under proper supervision would be a grave disservice, especially to appease a paranoid and fearful prohibitionist movement, that would rather pretend such things just aren’t true.

The Other Gun Debates…

Sure, we highlight the legal and political debates on guns, but we all know the internet was created by Al Gore so that we could debate such topics as 9mm vs. .45.

NRA is hosting a somewhat similar debate on fan favorite long guns over the next two weeks. Today’s face-off is the Springfield M1A SOCOM II vs. the Kimber 8400 Patrol. With 2.5 million fans, this could be like an internet gun debate on steroids. I bet the staff there are sitting back with the popcorn to see how this topic drives discussion in comments.

My vote is for the image on this post – cake gun.

Then ExUrban Kevin decided he wants to open discussion on what kind of gun should James Bond really be carrying. From one of the points made in the post, I had no idea that Princess Anne was nearly kidnapped once.

Profile Piece of NAGR/RGMO’s Dudley Brown

This is a very interesting article for people who like politics, essentially describing one viewpoint on how Colorado was lost. I don’t know enough about Colorado politics to have any insightful commentary, but the state, like many other western states, strikes me as having a pretty strong libertarian streak, much of which I’d imagine is incompatible with Brown’s very strong social conservatism. There’s a strong current in the GOP base, and especially in the Tea Party, that if we just run candidates that are conservative enough, we’ll never lose. I’ve never believed that to be true, and Colorado is evidence. You can run candidates that alienate other parts of your coalition, and hand the election to your opponents. That if we just run someone conservative enough is a myth peddled by talk radio hosts that making their livings telling people what they want to hear. The reality is getting to enough votes to win an election is not so simple.

Brown may be correct that the Democrats in Colorado have really stepped in it with the gun issue. I hope he’s correct in that. But for gun rights to be secure in Colorado, or anywhere, over the long term, you have to have a workable governing majority, and sometimes that involves making compromises. That would seem to be something Brown has trouble with.

Gun Ownership Actually Regulated

One of the biggest lies the gun control crowd ever told was to proffer the meme that guns were less regulated than teddy bears. Lately they prefer the comparison of guns to cars, which doesn’t strain credulity as much, but they gloss over the fact that you can buy a car without a background check, license, or training, and haul it off to keep or drive on private property. Charles W. Cooke takes a look at these claims.

ATF Could Get a Director

The Senate is close to a vote on B. Todd Jones who’s been nominated by the Obama Administration as ATF director. He’s not, by any means, a good pick, as he’s shown he’s willing to carry Holder’s water and retaliate against whistleblowers. NRA has decided not to pick the fight. Given what’s being arrayed against us, I’m not sure a confirmation fight over ATF is worth picking either. What would be the end? Either Jones never gets a hearing, in which case he continues to serve as “acting” director until Obama’s term runs out, or you force the White House to put up another nominee who will likely be just as bad. If we’re going to pick second term confirmation fights, I’d rather reserve them for federal judges, or, God forbid, a Supreme Court confirmation.