Category: Guns

Robb takes the arguments apart.  One thing to consider is that by driving up the price of ammunition, it will have the effect of making people who do have firearms for self-defense, including police officers, practice a lot less.  The model legislation bans possession of non-encoded ammo, so no reloading or surplus to keep people shooting.

Even if you exempt police and military from bullet serialization, without the civilian market, economies of scale disappear, the prices goes up, and pretty soon it costs more to train, so there will be less of it.  Shooting competition, which a lot of us participate in, right along side many police officers and military personnel, will also disappear.

This is a bad idea, that will actually do more harm to society than good, and I hope more mainstream gun control groups like the Brady Campaign will realize this and not pursue this nonsense (*chuckle* I can’t even write that with a straight face).  If we’re going to be a society that has firearms in it, we have every interest to make sure the people who wield them are as practiced and proficient as they can be.  Making ammunition more expensive will have the opposite effect.  No group can support this type of legislation that and call itself in favor of firearms safety.

The NRA is announcing that the final rule for National Park Carry has been approved, and will be published in the federal register.  This is a nice win for us, but it might be the last piece of good news we see on this front for a while.  The Obama Administration can undo this with an executive order, or [turns out you can’t undo a rule with an EO] through further rule making.

But even if this gets reversed, it feels good to take a poop in the punch bowl of the incoming administration.  The Bradys will want to get rid of this rule, and we will want to keep it.  Obama risks pissing off the approximately 2-3 million people who have a concealed carry permits in this country if he reverses this.  A lot of CCP holders are not hard core political junkies.  I work with two other people who have them, neither of whom are that involved.  I even know a few liberal Obama voting Dems who have LTCs!  This is a tough issue for the new administration.

UPDATE: Final rule is here.

UPDATE: Reading over the rule, it looks like open carry is still out of the question.  The rule doesn’t appear to make a distinction between rifles, shotguns and pistols, but it mandates concealed.  So my guess is that a rifle in a vehicle would be fine, if it’s legal under state law.  In Pennsylvania, and most states, it’s unlawful to have a loaded long gun in a vehicle, license or no.  Of course, under PA law, an SBR or SBS is not a long gun, and is legal to keep loaded in a vehicle.

UPDATE: Someone points out that buildings are still of limits for concealed carry.  The reason for this is that regulation of firearms in federal buildings is outside the rulemaking authority of The Department of Interior.  Those are found in 18 U.S.C. 930, and it would take an Act of Congress to change the law in that matter.  The National Park Serivce has done what it can under its authority.  If you want to carry in federal buildings on National Park property, you’ll have to take that up with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (and soon, Obama).

Gun control doesn’t work:

Virginia ranked sixth last year as a supplier of out-of-state crime guns per 100,000 inhabitants. West Virginia topped the list, according to the study by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan coalition headed by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D). Maryland ranked 28th.

You know what law Virginia has?   Yep.  One-gun-a-month.  Glad to see it working oh so well.

There’s an awful lot of lines being drawn in an awful lot of sand in various places on the Internet.  Linoge states:

Furthermore, I intentionally have not defined specifically where my personal “line in the sand” is, nor will I ever do so on this weblog or in a public format – that choice is mine, no one is in any position to question or belittle it, and attempts to do so will be responded to accordingly. Finally, I remain a proud (and, dare I say it, vocal) firearm owner and carrier, and an adamant supporter of the Second Amendment as well as the entirety of the United States Constitution.

To which one commenter of his replies:

Coward. Lying coward. You are obviously so unable to face reality and so angry at yourself because of that fact. Therefore, this is what you post. I feel sorry for you. You won’t define it because a permanent line doesn’t exist. And I think you’re ashamed of yourself because of it.

The demand to know what we’d do if the line is drawn behind us is rather like someone asking a chess player what he’d do to avoid being check mated if his opponent checks his king.  They will be the first, no doubt, to say it’s a cowardly cop out.  But it’s how I feel about it.  There are circumstances where I would agree violent resistance is the only choice.  But we are not now, in this country, anywhere close to those circumstances.  I find the rather delighted glee with which with some boast of forcing circumstances on others to be utterly repulsive.  If believing that makes me a coward, so be it, but I won’t stand with a group that preaches and prepares for civil war while numerous non-violent options lay unused on the table.  If they pass a new assault weapons ban?  We’ll fight it in the courts.  If they ban private sales?  There’s legislative, judicial action, and civil disobedience at our disposal.  Confiscation?  Heller should take that off the table, and even if not, there’s fifth amendment challenges that can be made.  Registration?  We already have it with every 4473 you fill out.

If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force.  There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.  But political activism is thankless work, and sometimes you lose.  It doesn’t have nearly the emotional appeal of being told that you’re holding the line while all the other rubes retreat.  It’s not as satisfying as believing you’re brave while others are cowardly.  But I am not in this for satisfaction, I am in this to win, and I can’t think of any faster way of losing than drawing a line, and daring people to cross it.

The Army has always had a real problem with being afraid of soldiers carrying guns.  Now the roosters have come home to roost.  The soldier was an MP too, which would presumably mean he carried a sidearm regularly as part of his duties.