Category: Guns

Even in Alabama:

While Alabamians support gun ownership, they do think there should be some restrictions in certain cases. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said felons who have paid their debt to society should not have a right to own a gun while 77 percent said they favor prohibiting ownership of fully automatic weapons.

Speaking as someone who’d love to own a few title II firearms, if you can’t even get 30% of the public in Alabama to support legal machine gun ownership, you’ve got a long way to go on the issue.  Truth be told, I have my doubts it’s even achievable.  NRA has seemingly staked out a position that accepts the NFA and GCA restrictions on machine guns, while hinting at support for the status quo, and perhaps even a position against the 1986 Hughes Amendment.  Just getting the Hughes Amendment repealed would be a miracle.

I think this statement is mostly true:

I think that US gun ownership supporters are entirely too romantic about what widespread automatic weapons mean in societies where there is either no tradition that teaches about these kinds of weapons, or else in the course of war and disruption, such traditions have eroded.

It is not always the case, contra Heinlein, that an armed society is a polite society.  Sometimes it is simply a brutal and brutalizing society, and part of the enormous responsibility of gun owners is to teach and pass along a culture of responsible, individual gun use.  That is one reason why, paradoxically for the gun-controllers, a culture of responsible gun use requires that they be reasonably and openly widespread, widely and openly accepted but subject to social norms and cultural traditions of use.

Read the whole thing.  It’s well worth your time.  Too often in many of these civil conflicts, there aren’t really any “good guys” that are protecting themselves from “bad guys.”  You merely have two equally bad groups of people brutalizing each other, and the greater society.

While I’m skeptical that any international arms control agreement that the UN proposes can change this fact, it’s hard to deny that the proliferation of small arms into Africa and other areas of conflict has had a stabilizing effect.

I think where “good guys” can be easily identified, responsible nations shouldn’t be prohibited from supplying arms by international treaty.  But it’s simplistic to assume that in many of these third world conflicts, there’s anything to be gained by arming one group or another.  Too many of these societies are simply broken, and while there are, no doubt, good people being brutalized, arming them isn’t going to have much of an impact on the greater conflict.

Hat Tip to Dave Hardy

UPDATE: In the comments over at Dave’s I remembered one important point I wanted to make:

In societies which are completely broken, the strong brutalize the weak, and brutalize each other. Putting a rifle in a man’s hands does nothing if he doesn’t have the skill or motivation to stand up for his own life and liberty. We have a tradition of liberty and individual rights in this country which makes having an armed society work. If your cultural tradition is subservience to the strong, then having a gun accomplishes nothing for you.

I think you see this on a small scale.  I have a friend that lives in high crime area I won’t go to without being armed, but I do not suggest it for her because I do not believe she is capable of taking another life to defend hers.  I don’t understand it, but it’s how she is.  A firearm is merely a tool… the true weapon is your mind.

The Unforgiving Minute points out that Michigan has done away with its farcical “safety inspection” system, but did not go so far as it eliminate the requirements that handguns be registered.  Now you can carry out your unconstitutional indignities by mail instead of having to show up in person.  Not perfect, but an improvement, TD points out:

Historically-minded readers might be interested to know that this permit system was originally put in place by the KKK-backed “Public Acts of 1927″, a racist reaction to the case of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a black physician who dared to defend his home from a white mob in Detroit.

Not shocking.

The Villiage of Morton Grove, IL has formally repealed its ban on handguns.  Earlier, I had blogged that they expected to do it, now it’s a done deal.

Dick Heller managed to register his revolver with the DC police.  This was only the first step in a very long battle to give the second amendment real meaning, and this is a moment which is a stunning defeat for the gun control movement, and Mayor Fenty.  It is a good day.

Be sure to tune into Cam’s show at NRANews.com to see their coverage of the event.

Hat tip to Of Arms and the Law

There have been several news articles mentioning the low turnout for registration of firearms in D.C.  Considering this is an amnesty, meaning you can bring guns that you might already have down to the police station, and the police will register them and make you legal, I’m not the least bit surprised by the low turnout.  Pretty much the only people in DC that have guns right now are police and criminals.  The criminals aren’t going to register their guns, and the police don’t have to.

In addition, semi-automatic pistols are a lot more common these days than revolvers, so I suspect the fact that DC is, in contra to the Supreme Court ruling, continuing to ban them also plays into this.  DC residents have no where to lawfully aquire a gun, even if they did want to register one.  I also suspect many people are figuring this whole game DC is playing with its residents’ second amendment rights might soon be coming to an end.  You can bet if I lived in DC, and stored my guns out of state, I would not be eagar to bring them into The District under the current unconstitutional framework set up by DC City Council.