Irrelevance

John Richardson managed to find Ladd Everitt’s comment on ATF Request for Comment on the multi-sale reporting requirement for long guns. [Fixed an error – Seb] Ladd Everitt is Communication Director for Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, but he did not respond in his official capacity.

One interesting note is that he approves of the multiple long gun reporting requirement, and enforcement of “laws already on the books,” even though the laws already on the books prohibit the reporting of multiple long gun sales. What he’s really saying is that he wants ATF to break the law.

The real funny thing, however, as John notes, is that his response is a form letter from Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun MAIG coalition. I guess he’s spending too much time arguing with gun bloggers, and revealing personal information about them on Facebook and Twitter, that CSGV has no time to start their own astroturfing campaign. They have to rely on someone else’s.

Who Owns Rifles

Should the Brady Campaign ever wonder just who owns all of those evil rifles they keep trying to ban, NSSF has put together some interesting survey numbers.

The average owner has 2.6 EBRs MSRs. Isn’t that about the same number of children American families tend to have? I guess it’s one for each kid – or fraction thereof.

The overwhelming majority of you bought your first scary-looking rifles before the Great Obama Gun Rush, but 30% waited until the guy who wanted to ban them entered the White House & gun prices went through the roof.

Only 1% bought an EBR MSR as their first gun.

The top two reasons you guys aren’t shooting your guns as much as you’d like is because of time and cost of ammunition. Of course, just barely half of the rifle owners even have a regular place to shoot, at least in the form of a shooting range membership.

Judge Weinstein’s Game is Hopefully Over

NSSF is reporting that Judge Weinstein, who is (in)famous for pretending FOPA does not exist, and abusing personal jurisdiction when it comes to lawsuits against the firearms industry, has been smacked down by a higher court:

Finally, after more than 15 years of Weinstein dragging members of the firearms industry into his courtroom based on his unique, industry-specific personal jurisdiction jurisprudence, someone on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has had an opportunity to expose Judge Weinstein’s improper and unconstitutional analysis used to advance his attack on our industry.

You can read the entire ruling here. Judge Wesley’s opinion is the last, and is scathing. He accused Weinstein of “creat[ing], out of whole cloth, a seven-factor test for determining whether personal jurisdiction exists over ‘retail gun establishments.’”

Regulating Air Guns in California

Regulating out of existence, that is. This is not only a bad bill, it’s a dangerous bill. Air guns are not toys and should not look like toys, but that appears to be what this bill would do. My opinion is the manufacturers should just pull out of California if this passes.

I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in that state.

Gun Buybacks as Political Statements

I already made fun of a New York group that was giving out flowers in exchange for guns when they sent out a release that butchered most rules of the English language on 4/20, making me think it could be a joke. It turns out that it’s not a joke – at least in terms of being an intentionally funny event. But, it would seem that their attempt to make a political statement through the guns for flowers program was an even bigger failure than their previous event which was a guns for nothing program. They both did significantly worse than their first attempt at a guns for gift certificates event.

In 2009, the group gave out gift certificates in exchange for weapons and collected 53 firearms. Last year, the group did not have money for gift certificates, and turn-ins dropped to 18 hand guns and long guns, Gilroy said.

On Saturday, the group collected four handguns, four long guns and 15 loads of ammunition, he said.

They have to count the ammunition in order to make it into the double digits.

The peace and justice committee hopes to get funding again next year to spur more turn-ins, Gilroy said.

“If we don’t get the funding, we may look for a different way to express our views through debates or discussions,” he said.

If his goal is to make a statement on his ideas, then perhaps he can start an anti-gun blog. He’ll no doubt garner quite a bit of traffic – from gun owners.

Our Freedom Loving Opponents

Our opponents think it’s very important to look at interesting and novel ways to eliminate gun violence in society. They are willing to sacrifice anything to reach their dream where everyone trades in their guns for flowers and unicorns. Apparently even their freedom and privacy. Let’s take a look at this gem from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Facebook page:

Body Scanner Busy Body

Apparently this gun free fantasy extends to the point of putting body scanners in public places, so your bank can stare at pictures of  your nude body. Ladd gets an A for trying to steer this particular supporter off the crazy, and back on the path to productive activism, but it was too late.

Our opponents will be the first to vote for a pervasive police state to carry forward their idealist fantasies.

Philly OC Abuse Case Getting Media Attention

Folks might remember the YouTube sensation from a month or so ago of a Philadelphia man who was threatened by a Philadelphia Police officer for legally carrying a firearm. You might also remember that the City is charging him with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. This weekend activists held a protest to demonstrate against this kind of treatment. This, to me, is a textbook example of how to use open carry effectively as a form of protest.

Today, the media is on fire with the story. First, from the Daily News, complete with a transcript. Next John Stossel has picked up on it at Fox News Business. The Daily News notes that they will be retraining officers on open carry:

“Our officers weren’t up to speed [because] we never really addressed it,” said Lt. Francis Healy, the department’s lawyer.

“In the last several weeks, we’ve done a lot of training and put out a lot of information about what is allowed and what’s not allowed. Right now, our officers are better-versed on the subject matter.”

Of course, this isn’t entirely true, as this directive from last year demonstrates. This is a very interesting case, in addition to being an utter disgrace. Pretty clearly Fiorino has a pretty good case for a Civil Rights lawsuit, but we’ll have to see what happens with these charges. It’s hard to believe that they will stick, given he was exercising his rights and was within the law.

Restaurant Carry Bill in Ohio

Our opponents are already in hysterics over the bill, and appear to be conceding the Senate vote on the matter, and are appealing directly to Governor Kasich by asking him to veto it. This is good.

This weekend I took advantage of Virginia’s new restaurant carry provisions, and somehow, by some miracle, managed to avoid consuming alcohol while carrying as prescribed by law, and managed to avoid shooting up the place. That’s in contrast to back home in Pennsylvania, where you can have a glass of wine with dinner while carrying. Clearly back home I’m shooting up restaurants on a regular basis, along with all my other fellow 600,000 LTC holders in the Commonwealth.

SAF Lawsuit in Illinois

SAF has filed Moore v. Madigan. Over at Only Guns and Money, John Richardson talks about the plaintiffs. John also noted that the NRA suit is filed in the Southern District of Illinois, and the SAF suit is filed in the Central District, so the cases cannot be combined. I believe, however, they could be combined on appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, much like McDonald was with NRA’s case. Either way I don’t think it’s bad for the circuit court to have more than one case to choose to hear in the event this gets appealed, which it probably will.