Guns – Page 458 – Shall Not Be Questioned

On the History of Gun Rights

From Jeff Knox of the Firearms Coalition:

For a good overview 1966 â€“ 2000, may I suggest you pick up a copy of “Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War” (www.NealKnox.com). Dad was very involved in the fight both as a reporter and a lobbyist and his articles from the time are enlightening. There was not nearly as much emphasis on fundamental philosophy back in â€™68 as there is today and there was a whole lot more of the same sort of mentality that you see from clubs that ban the shooting of â€œhumanoidâ€ targets, the wearing of camouflage clothing, or the shooting of anything â€œrapid-fireâ€ (heaven forbid full-auto), or the Oklahoma Rifle Association board that came out in opposition to an open carry bill last session because open carry might make people uncomfortable. Over the years there have been many leaders of NRA and the industry who have exhibited such attitudes.

As to NRA, they have made mistakes. They have on several occasions caved or cooperated long before political pragmatism would have suggested, and they donâ€™t play well with others who they should consider compatriots rather than competitors. But, NRA is the Big Dog in the fight and love them or hate them, they are who the politicians listen to. No amount of bitching on the internet is going to change that. Everyone who cares about gun rights should be a member of NRA â€“ preferably a Life Member. Once youâ€™re a member, kick them in the shins to take stronger positions and withhold any additional contributions until they do so. Vote in Director Elections and lobby those Directors to push the organization toward a harder line â€“ and replace them if they donâ€™t do what you want them to do. At this point most of those efforts will be futile, but another Cincinnati Revolt is not completely impossible â€“ though not quite like Cincinnati since theyâ€™ve changed the bylaws to take such power away from the members â€“ and eventually a large, noisy contingent of the membership demanding better of the NRA will result in a better organization.

I have a copy of the book he mentioned (to which I have added a link). While I only got about half way through it before all this job uncertainty hit, from what I read so far, I would recommend it. Their father Neal was one of the architects, really one of the prime movers, of the 1977 Cincinnati revolt. Jeff and Chris, following in the footsteps of their father Neal, follow a more hard core and less-compromising path than I often think is prudent, but the fundamental emphasis they place on working from within is a worthwhile; if you don’t like what NRA is doing, work to change it. I’d certainly like to see less legislative priority placed, for instance, of infringing on the free speech of doctors, or interfering with employment laws and property rights. But there’s not much the organization is going to do to stop me from participating in it. I’ve tried to become a voice, and advocate for the things I believe in. Jeff and Chris, like their father, also do the same.

Illegal & Unethical Mayors United with Bloomberg

An ally of Michael Bloomberg is raising eyebrows about just how political favors are used and abused in his town. Even better, it’s at the expense of public safety.

The police chief and borough manager in Dormont are accusing the mayor of ticket fixing.

It turns out the mayor has dismissed thousands of tickets over the years and now the Allegheny County District Attorney is getting involved.

He’s fixed more than $30,000 worth of tickets – enough to buy a police car. When the police chief was raising this issue, the mayor canned him to shut him up. Other city officials gave him his job back and are asking questions since some supporters of the mayor had as many as 35 tickets fixed in one year. That’s nearly a ticket a week for just one person!

This Mayor Against Guns is Thomas Lloyd of Dormont, Pennsylvania whose smiling mug graces the MAIG website.

Is it any wonder that the allies Bloomberg finds to join his anti-gun crusade are criminals and the corrupt who abuse the legal system to get their supporters out of trouble?

Media Doesn’t Matter

Lots of people have informed me I’ve been linked by Media Matters. I’m going to guess the Media doesn’t really Matter when you have time to pick on B-list blogs like this one. That said, I’m glad that my readers are alert and paying attention, as I never would have noticed the whole eleven hits they’ve sent me as of the time I’m posting this. I got more traffic yesterday from No Looking Backwards, who hasn’t posted anything in over a year, than I got from Media Matters. If this is Joyce’s attempt to counter the Republican Media Juggernaut, I just have to say I hope they continue to flush their money down the toilet. But Media matters took some time to refute something of mine, so I thought I should take some time to explain why I think their position is tenuous.

It is no secret that our community opposes registration of firearms. I myself do not favor it because I haven’t seen any evidence is accomplishes anything, and we’ve seen enough abuses and potential abuses to dissuade us. California has strict registration, and still has a rather high violent crime rate. Pennsylvania keeps computerized records of every gun sold, and yet Philadelphia still is still one of the more violent large cities. Michigan has registration, as does Chicago. Both Detroit and Chicago are extremely violent cities. So registration is off the table, and we’re not negotiating on that. We have the political power that we do not have to.

But the biggest mistake that Media Matters makes in their refutation of my assertion is this:

Strawing buying, buying a gun on behalf of a prohibited person, Â is a federal crime but only certain states enable local prosecutors to target straw buyers. InÂ New JerseyÂ a local prosecutor could go after a straw buyer independently, not so inÂ DelawareÂ orÂ Pennsylvania.

This is completely untrue. Straw buying is a crime in Pennsylvania. There is no private transfers for handguns in this state. If you buy a handgun, or transfer a handgun, it has to go through an FFL or a Sheriff. One of the two. What does Media Matters thinks enforces that law? Harsh language? The local police and local DA’s enforce it. Ask Tom Corbett and Lynne Abraham if there are state laws that allow local prosecution of straw buyers.

Delaware does not restrict private transfers between persons not prohibited. But Delaware does make it a crime to pass a firearm to a prohibited person, and they also have a state level straw purchasing statute. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the First State has fewer controls on the sale, transfer and disposition of firearms than Pennsylvania, it is not a significant source of crime guns for New Jersey, or any other state.

So Media Matters is completely ignorant of their knowledge of the relevant law in this area, which is hardly surprising given that their prattling in this issue have generally tended toward extreme ignorance when I’ve come across them. They are also ignorant in their statement of this fact:

Regardless of how New Jersey compares to other States there are lots ofÂ Federal Firearms Licensees in New Jersey. Further, there is no reason to assume the gun traffickers Vice mentions are necessarily previously convicted criminals unable to legally obtain firearms.

When looking at sources of guns, I think comparing New Jersey to other states is kind of important, especially given how many violent cities in the Garden State border Pennsylvania. Unlike the law abiding, criminals don’t have any reason not to cross a state border. You’d expect a serious FFL disparity would pretty heavily influence where guns come from. Rather than going through a specific site, I went straight to the ATF to find out what the numbers are. But first, what are the trace numbers for New Jersey?

First off is that New Jersey is New Jersey’s largest source of crime guns, at 405. This is followed by Pennsylvania, at 284, and then North Carolina (185), then Virginia (171). New York State, which New Jersey shares a border with was 67. Delaware, which borders New Jersey had no guns traced to it, despite having the most lax sale and transfer laws of any state bordering it. Maryland had 27 traces. I don’t think the role of FFL density can be denied in influencing these numbers.

New Jersey has 265 dealer type FFLs. Pennsylvania has 2225. That’s not just a few more FFLs. That’s an order of magnitude more FFLs. New York State has about half as many (1622), and they are much more concentrated upstate than Pennsylvania’s, which exist in high density in border areas. Delaware has 114 FFLs to its name, which is reflected in low stats to New Jersey or any state. North Carolina has slightly more than New York, at 1753. Virginia has even less at 1419. Keep in mind that Virginia has a one-gun-a-month statute, and North Carolina requires a permit to purchase a handgun, the same as New Jersey. Maryland, which also requires a purchase permit, has 484 FFLs.

So what kind of correlations do we find? Does where guns come from correlate more to Brady Score or the number of FFLs? Or Capital to Capital distance? There is actually no correlation between FFL numbers and traces overall, because the strongest correlation, which isn’t actually all that strong, is Capitol to Capitol distance, with a Pearson correlation of about 0.4. There was a very small correlation between number of traces and Brady Score, but it was in the opposite direction, of -0.3 correlation, meaning that the higher the Brady score went, the more guns could be traced from that state to New Jersey.

If you consider the effect that geography has on trace numbers, and restrain the correlation to states that are under 300 miles capital-to-capital distance from New Jersey, you get a correlation of 0.87, which is actually quite strong. Even just eliminating New Jersey itself from consideration, the correlation increases to 0.23 comparing FFL numbers to traces overall.

So we can see that the two major factors when it comes to guns being traced in New Jersey from other states is either distance from the state, or the number of FFLs it has. There is no correlation on Brady Score if you take the same limitations for that. Therefore, despite Media Doesn’t Matter’s calling into question of the integrity of my claims, they stand up to analysis. It is their claims which fall over. Perhaps they want to go on a mission to reduce the number of FFLs. New Jersey’s has certainly been successful at doing that, by largely extinguishing interest in shooting and gun ownership through the use of byzantine laws and stifling regulation. But in our Constitutional framework, that’s an unworkable goal, and should not be advocates by anyone who claims to care about the Bill or Rights.

Hawaii Gets Sued

Never heard of the plaintiffs before, so I hope they know what they are doing. Our expert Second Amendment litigators often remind us the biggest threats are from ill considered suits brought forward by amateurs at best, and kooks at worst. Not saying that’s the case here, but always something to watch out for when you see new suits being filed. Looking at the actual suit, it doesn’t look bad. Given that, I wish them luck.

UPDATE: I apologize for the Scribd link. I hate Scribd with a white hot passion, and really wish people wouldn’t use it. Most browsers can handle a direct link to a PDF just fine.

eBay

SayUncle reports the company seems to believe its job is to impose California law on everyone. Apparently now they are enforcing California law that’s not even law anymore, when it comes to firearms accessories. I never use eBay because of their anti-gun policies.

Turning Gamers into Side Income

While I’m mired in the suck of unemployment, the wheels have been churning. My previous job consumed enough CPU cycles to keep my mind pretty thoroughly occupied, and what was left over, I dedicated to shooting, the Second Amendment, and blogging about shooting and the Second Amendment. Shooting is now an expense, so I’m not doing much of it these days, and blogging was never more than a part time job. So that leaves me with what to do between rounds of looking for work, and doing interviews.

In my free time I’ve been doing some more flight simming, and involving myself more in that community. A few people have made games revolving around flight sims, but those have mostly involved Virtual Airlines, and Virtual Air Traffic Control. The problem I have with all of these ideas is that they are essentially extensions of simulations, and as games go, I think that caters to more of a niche audience.

I’ve always believed that the primary purpose in any gaming community is being able to compare yourself to other people. That’s true whether you’re a video gamer, or your game is competitive pistol shooting. If you don’t look at the people under you in a ranking, and think “Heh, I’m better than all those guys,” and look at the people above you on the ranking and think, “For now, I’ll learn from you, because you are better than me, but one day, one day, I’m going to totally pwn you,” then you’re not really endowed with the competitive spirit, and may even lament what I’m talking about. A true gamer prides himself on his competence in his craft, but in order to understand the bounds of that competence, comparison is necessary.

In order to compare yourself, you have to have a pretty good social understanding of the community in which your operating, which requires an active social element, where people know and interact with each other. In my college days, I was a high wizard on a MUD. A good MUD needed to have a balance of both these elements on order to succeed; you needed to know your fellow players enough to divide them into rivals and allies, and you also needed a way to measure your skills in relation to others.

Competition is an excellent driving force, but you can not make the path to masterdom easy, lest the view from the top of the mountain seem uninspiring. You also cannot make it too difficult, for then the sensible path is just to surrender to the mountain and turn back. In my experience with competitive Silhouette shooting, competence is too difficult, and that discourages beginners. I think practical shooting is more popular today because it has the right balance of difficulty to master, but still offers enough early reward to keep it interesting for beginners.

Fantasy is another important element in any game. At the risk of offending people, this is another major appeal of IDPA and IPSC that other, more traditional shooting sport lack. Both try to be simulations of defensive handgun situations. This translates to the flight sim community as well, which feeds pretty exclusively off fantasy. Flight sims cater to aviation enthusiasts who don’t have the time, money, or good health to do the real thing. Whether you’re an actual pilot who still dreams of flying large airliners, or a diabetic who can’t get a medical certificate to fly a Cessna, the community has something to offer you. But to go back to the shooting analogy, imagine an IPSC or IDPA competition essentially boiled down to a match director scoring everything up, and going down the line at the end of the match, “You lived, you died, you lived, you lived, you died,” etc, etc. You’d probably still have people who’d be interested, but who are the winners and losers? Who is better than the next guy? Sure, you want to live, but this is a game! It has to be to keep people interested long term.

If you can combine the fantasy with community and competition, I think you have something really appealing.Â This is the thought that’s been obsessing me for at least the past five days. I’ve been playing a game that’s a plugin to the two major flight sims, that almost has the right idea, but it’s a poorly thought out and shoddy implementation too focused on simulation rather than social networking and gaming. I think I know how to do it much better. To top it off, Microsoft largely got out of the flight sim business, and that industry is about to be upheaved with the arrival of X-Plane 10. All I keep thinking about is, if I could get 2000 people to pay me 15 bucks a year, that’s real money. If I could get 4000 people a year to pay me 15 bucks a year, that’s almost a job. This community is willing to pay money for entertainment, and a lot of folks have made money on third party add-ons. Even if I got 500 people t pay me 15 dollars, it’s decent money versus the effort. It’ll boost my skills at software development and integration, which can’t hurt for a job. My ideas will tax my skills in Python, C++, PHP, SQL and systems administration skills such that I’m having a hard time seeing a downside to doing this. At worst I keep working with some important jobs skills, and at best I make a few bucks on the side. This is one of those times when I feel a lot of things coming together. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I think this could help me out, and provide some people with entertainment, and perhaps contribute to another community that has a tough time recruiting new members.

Were NRA & Manufacturers Complicit in the Gun Control Act of 1968?

A post by Lyle over at View from North Central Idaho got me thinking about a topic I started researching:

“The patent on the M1 carbine was owned by Western Cartridge Co. and David “Carbine” Williams, and still in effect when Penney and Arnold wanted to begin manufacturing M1 carbines in 1958. Penney and Arnold contacted Winchester-Western and offered them a percentage per carbine manufactured, in return for permission to manufacture the M1 carbine. John Olin, owner of Winchester-Western, refused. Olin, Winchester-Western, and more than a few other American manufacturers were opposed to all of the surplus weapons being returned to the United States, where they were being sold at prices the manufacturers couldn’t compete with.Â This opposition eventually led the manufacturers and the National Rifle Association to support the Gun Control Act of 1968, which, amongst many other things, prohibited the importation of U.S. military surplus.“

I’ve tried, at various times, to do some research on the historical arguments surrounding the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act, but there’s difficulty without spending some very serious time or buying articles. Dave Hardy is also probably more of an expert on this than I am, given he’s done quite a bit of this kind of research. Generally speaking, I’d want to rely on period accounts rather than modern accounts. Examination of the Congressional Record would also be important. My concern is that there’s a lot of bullshit in this issue, and plenty of people willing to twist the truth to help fit their preferred narrative.

Some of what I’ve found has been surprising. For instance, while it would seem too good to be true that the Gun Control Act was modeled after Nazi gun control laws, as best I can tell this is at least partially true, in that Senator Dodd, who was the act’s architect, did have the 1938 German law translated to English, and some aspects of the German law made it into GCA ’68.

Another legend was that the manufacturers were complicit in the Gun Control Act’s passage. I can find no direct evidence of the manufacturers supporting the Gun Control Act in contemporary press accounts of the time, though there areÂ news accounts speculating on it. You also find accounts of other manufacturers howling about the new restrictions. While it’s true that three major gun manufacturers were located in Connecticut, the anti-gun New England states have never paid much heed to their interests, so it’s not very hard for me to believe they didn’t give much of a crap back then either.

Was NRA complicit in GCA? Most of what I’ve found from news accounts at the time would appear to refute that. There was even a nefarious gun lobby that controlled Congress in 1968. One story speaks of Dodd denying that he directed the FBI to investigate NRA for lobbying activity. If NRA was complicit, I doubt this would be a story. I doubt you’d see news accounts like this either.

I’ve found some modern accounts that suggest the NRA had a hand in drafting the legislation. I would certainly hope so. If you know you’re going to get something shoved down your throat, and you don’t have the votes to stop it, only a foolish organization would reject an opportunity to clean up language and prevent legislators from inadvertently doing something really stupid. I’ve also found modern accounts that suggest NRA supported it at first, but under pressure from membership, reversed course and began to oppose GCA ’68. Pretty much everyone seems to agree that NRA’s opposition to GCA was disorganized and half-hearted. After the GCA it was also certainly true that a faction of NRA leadership wished to get out of politics and move to Colorado Springs, to permanently remove itself from the debate in DC. I would not expect that kind of internal squabbling to show up in the newspapers, but we certainly have those arguments today, so I don’t see why we wouldn’t have been having them in 1968 too. By 1977, the faction of NRA that represented political engagement had won the battle, though internal quibbles continued until fairly recently.

I would like to see an account of NFA and GCA, using primary sources, much like Dave Hardy did with the Firearms Owners Protection Act. Most of what’s worked its way into the modern accounts of both NFA and GCA have been twisted to suit the ends of modern narratives.

Another example is the National Firearms Act. It is not quite true that NRA supported the NFA. It is true, however, that they had a hand in drafting the machine gun provisions. Originally NFA was modeled after the Uniforms Firearms Act, which was model legislation introduced in the 1930s and taken up by a number of state, including Pennsylvania. That’s where we got the name for our modern gun control statutes that have evolved greatly, both for better and worse, since. But it was also more thoroughly adopted by Washington D.C. which shows in their their whacky definition of a machine gun:

(10) â€œMachine gunâ€ means any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot:Â (A) Automatically, more than 1 shot by a single function of the trigger;Â (B) Semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading.

This was cribbed straight out of the UFA model legislation, and was also the language initially adopted for the National Firearms Act. The original NFA also covered handguns under the same $5 transfer tax as any other weapon. It was due to NRA and the United States Revolver Association (the President of the former was Vice President of the latter) that the handgun provisions were removed, and the law altered to only cover automatic weapons.

Did NRA, in 1934, throw machine guns under the bus? Yes. But largely to save handguns and semi-automatic rifles. The same thing played out later in the century. I would argue that culturally, we’re probably in better shape in this issue than we have been since the beginning of the 20th century. Most of that period, from 1934 to 1968, were nothing but slowing the rate of loss. We gained back a lot of ground in 1986, but also did lose some with the Hughes Amendment. We had two serious setbacks in the 90s, and a few minor ones, but since then it’s been nothing but improvement. We have to keep driving the cultural change, because that’s what drives political change in the long run. It’s not a quick process, but it wasn’t for our opponents either. It takes relentlessness, and you can’t count on the leaders in this issue to do everything for you. Ultimately the power of NRA, or really any other gun rights organization, comes from the people who get behind it.

No Guns for the Stupid

That seems to be the new Brady policy.

Brady Stupid

Who gets to decide who is too stupid to own a gun? Is there another constitutional right that we can condition on an IQ test? Is this really the best they can come up with these days? This isn’t a public policy statement, it’s juvenile. This is CSGV level stupid, which Brady seems to be rapidly descending into.

Speaking of Hysterics

Olympic authorities in London apparently don’t know how to stand up to hysterical ninnies:

LondonÂ schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.

The proper way to deal with these losers is to let them hew and haw, mock them, taunt them, then ignore them. People who would balk at the idea of children watching an olympic sport, because it happens to involve guns, are borderline disturbed, if you ask me. Our anti-gun groups can’t get serious political traction here, and that’s a very good thing, because this is what we’d be facing if that were not the case.

Georgina Geikie, 26, aÂ Commonwealth GamesÂ bronze medallist and Olympic pistol hopeful, said she was “horrified”, adding: “This is a chance for children to look at guns in a different way. They are taking away the opportunity for the sport to blossom. How do we educate people that it is a sport if they cannot watch it?”

That’s the whole idea, Georgina. They’ve won. Your government has listened to, and bought into the hysterics of raving, disturbed people. They can’t risk that being undone.

But Danny Bryan, founder of Communities Against Gun and Knife Crime said: “I agree with Boris. It is good kids should enjoy the Games but there’s no way we should glorify guns.”

This is where to make a stand. I very much doubt the majority of the British population shares a view this hysterical. If I were the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, I might commission a poll.Â They are a long, long way from making any inroads, but you have to turn it around somewhere. This is where I’d pick, if I were trying to preserve the shooting sports in the UK. At some point, your opponent will reach too far, and it’s critical to be able to capitalize on the backlash. Our opponents did that in the 90s. It took the better part of two decades, but we turned it around and beat them back. The goals have to be small… being able to practice olympic pistol in your home country might be a worthy early goal.

Hat Tip to NRA News

We’re Winning

Colleges in Pennsylvania are offering shooting lessons as part of the curriculum. Right now it’s only curriculum for wildlife biology students, but it’s a start:

“With this class, if one of these students becomes a pheasant biologist, for example, they know what the hunting end is all about. If someone asks them, ‘Have you even fired a shotgun before?’ they can actually say yes.”

I just like seeing colleges presenting the topic in a manner that doesn’t involve fanning the flames of hysteria.