Category Archives: Second Amendment

Irresponsible Gun Ownership

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Heidi Yewman has a post over at MsBlog about her spending a month with a Glock pistol.

Her behavior is prime example of the fact that not everything that is legal is wise—or, in her case, responsible.

She bought a 9 mm Glock, took it home, and freaked out when she opened the box and found a magazine in the pistol. She found a cop (who was doing a traffic stop) and asked him to remove the magazine for her.

The cop thought I was an idiot and suggested I take a class. But up to that point I’d done nothing wrong, nothing illegal.

Nonsense! She had done something very, very, very wrong. She was fooling around with a firearm and had absolutely no training, not even the Eddie Eagle safely class the NRA offers for kids.

She began her … quest … fool’s errand … whatever … because she’s opposed to Starbucks’s policy of not hassling customers who carry firearms in accordance with local laws.

I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm’s reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.

Did I say, “irresponsible”? Let me also add, “immoral”! If she is so afraid of her own self-control that she doesn’t trust herself to be armed, why does she assume that she has the moral right to endanger others.

UPDATE—Zed from Day by Day asks a good question here.

Dingy Harry

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Dingy Harry may be back to trying to get a gun control bill through the Senate. Although he won’t be specific about plans, he’s said that he wants to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

The Senator should consult the current version of 18 USC 922, which reads in part:

(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person—
(1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
(2) is a fugitive from justice;
…
(4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution …

It’s already illegal to sell or even to give guns to crooks or wackos. You know, it might be simpler for the Progressives to state their real policy objective, viz.:

[O]rdinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State.

—Heinrich Himmler

It would be more honest to offer an Amendment to repeal the Second.

Baghdad Bob Back at Work?

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Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (better known as “Baghdad Bob”) must be coming out of retirement. Who else would be crazy enough to be peddling the meme now showing up on the left that the NRA on its last leg? First, The New Republic; then, The Boston Globe; then, The Philadelphia Daily News; now, The Guardian; and all pushing the idea that the NRA is finally facing real opposition and losing its clout.

Uh, huh.

That’s must be the reason why paid membership has soared past 5,000,000.

Being a Subject Vis-à-vis Being a Citizen

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The Daley Gator discusses one of the aspects of being a subject in the UK as opposed to being a citizen in (most of) the United States. (Second Amendment effectively void in New York, Maryland, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and certain other jurisdictions.)

It has been noted that the average American household is better armed than a typical British bobby.

It’s Only a Constitutional Right

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What could go wrong? All these Democrats are proposing is to make a right enumerated in the Bill of Rights subject to the whim of unelected bureaucrats who can suspend it by placing your name on a secret list you can’t see without any due process and no judicial review.

Oh, and they claim that banning gun purchases by persons on the terrorist watch list would have stopped the Boston Marathon bombers. How? Will pressure cooker purchases be subject to background checks? Or the common household chemicals available at most supermarkets that can be used to homebrew explosives?

You know, it would be easier for these control freaks to run our lives for us if they’d simply repeal the Bill of Rights wholesale.

UPDATE–Prof. Reynolds notes that what the politicians control they use against us.

To borrow a word: Indeed.

Reduced Capacity Magazines and Fingerprints

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It’s been reported that the police who engaged in a gunfight with the Tsarnaev brothers last week fired over 200 rounds of ammunition. They didn’t kill the older brother outright. The autopsy says that he died of gunshot and blast wounds (from his own explosives). The younger brother was wounded but still in action a day later.

And Gov. O’Malley wants the already below-normal 20 round limit on magazines here in Maryland reduced to 10 rounds.

It’s also been reported that neither of the Tsarnaev brothers ever filled out any state paperwork for any of the handguns they used.

And Gov. O’Malley wants to fingerprint folks who fill out the paperwork to legally buy handguns.

Which Choice Are You Pro?

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All of us are pro-choice to the extent that we believe that we should be free to choose the way we wish. The anarchists among us would agree with that point of view wholeheartedly. Libertarians might moderate that to the extent of limiting choices that affect another person. At the other end of the spectrum, nanny-statists and Progressives would say that choice must be limited by their understanding of what is good for us, by which they really mean the choices they choose.

At the silly end of things, nanny-statists such as Mayor Bloomberg want to take away your right to choose a Big Gulp. They argue that it’s bad for your health and that you’ll be a burden on the healthcare system, yada, yada, yada. At the serious end of things, they want to take away your right to choose to defend yourself with a modern sporting rifle loaded with a normal capacity magazine. They argue that … umm … well, actually they don’t have a logical argument; they just don’t like the idea that you might have a gun. They have to make a stretch to bring some other party’s interest to limit your choices.

OTOH, most Progressives favor a right for a mother to end the life of her child in utero. For those of us who look at the DNA of a child and see a member of our species from conception, it’s clear that an abortion affects an innocent party. Others may disagree about when that child deserves protection, but essentially no one advocates the killing of viable children born alive. The question of when to protect a child’s life is one of those inconvenient questions that many would rather not wrestle with.

That, I think, is the reason for the main stream media’s avoidance of the Gosnell murder cases. I brings that question into focus.

Team Kimberlin Post of the Day

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One of the latest efforts of Brett Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution US is a website called NRA Watch (No, I won’t link to it.) that is advocating for stricter gun control, including a ban on modern sporting rifles such as the AR15 and standard capacity magazines. Hold that thought while you read the following passage from page 173 of Mark Singer’s Citizen K:

To counter Kimberlin’s claim that he was temperamentally incapable of violence (“not prone to assaultive behavior”), for instance, the government cited the array of weapons that had been seized during the drug bust in Texas. Among them was a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol equipped with a silencer. The testimony of Bixler placed this gun in Kimberlin’s hands, along with the half-dozen AR-15s he said he had bought the defendant.

At the time that he was busted while trying to smuggle 5 tons of dope in Texas, Brett Kimberlin was already a convicted felon, and it was illegal for him to possess any firearm. Did that law stop him? Straw purchases were against the law then as now. Did that stop him?

Do you think that he would have complied with a 10-round magazine limit for the AR15s he wasn’t supposed to have?

Me neither.

Hello, Foot. Meet Gun.

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I’m told that shooting oneself in the foot is a bad idea. I suppose so. I’ve never tried it, although I have been around more than my share of negligent firearm discharges.

There are four very simple rules which will make a negligent discharge unlikely.

1. All firearms are always handled as if they are loaded.
2. Never point the muzzle of a firearm at anything you are unwilling to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are aligned on the target.
4. Be sure of your target.

Those rules are simple, and following them will keep you from negligently shooting yourself or any one or thing else. The rules and laws governing who can have a gun and under what circumstances are more complicated, and failure to attend to those rules can also be quite painful.

Here in Maryland, for instance, for almost 20 years we have had strict controls on the transfers of certain kinds of rifles and magazines. Here’s how that affects me.

I have a collector’s item WWII vintage M1 Carbine made by National Postal Meter. It isn’t on any of the state no-no lists, at least not yet. However, the 30-round magazines commonly used with M1 Carbines are restricted in that they cannot be transferred to another individual in Maryland. So if I take my Carbine to the range, I can shoot it using one of my old 30-round magazines, but if I allow someone else to shoot it (lending it is a transfer), they must use a 15-round magazine because I can’t transfer the 30-round magazine to them.

I also have a Colt AR15 Sporter Carbine. It doesn’t use the usual .223 Remington/5.56 mm NATO ammunition; it’s chambered for 7.62 X 39 mm Russian round that is legal for deer hunting in Maryland. The only magazines I have for it are the 5-round units provided by Colt. Since an AR15 is regulated firearm, I can’t just hand it to whomever I wish. So-called “gratuitous” temporary loans are OK, but anyone other than a family member, close friend, or licensed dealer can be risky. All transfers are supposed to go through a licensed dealer. However, the 5-round magazines have no restrictions whatsoever.

This is what happens when laws are cobbled together by people who have little understanding of what they are trying to regulate. When I was a federally licensed dealer a couple of decades ago, there were over 20,000 federal, state, and local gun laws in the book that the ATF sent me, some of them contradictory. There are more of ‘em now.

Sigh.

It’s a Feature, Not a Bug

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The Maryland Legislature has joined with New York, Colorado, and Connecticut in passing a gun control law of doubtful constitutionality. Our governor will certainly sign the bill, and the law will certainly be petitioned to referendum. We’ll see how thing go from there.

Companies such as Magpul in Colorado and Beretta in Maryland will be moving to states that respect the Second Amendment. Some Maryland residents are beginning to talk about voting with their feet. However, many supports of these laws view these exoduses as feature rather than a bug. Having those bitter clingers move away gets them out of the neighborhood.

Sigh.

There are days when I wonder why I ever left Tennessee.

Adam Lanza and the NRA

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While I was getting dressed this morning, I heard the newsreader on NPR mention that among the items listed on the search warrant for the Lanza house was an “NRA certificate.”

Oh, horrors! The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter had a certificate from the NRA.

Gimme a break.

The NRA teaches courses in firearm safety, and Connecticut recognizes them as adequate training in safe gun handling for an applicant for a concealed carry permit. While Adam Lanza was only 20 when he committed his infamous crime, he might have taken such a course if he intended to apply when he turned 21. Or maybe he did some rifle shooting at summer camp when he was a kid and achieved some Junior Marksmanship rating. There are numerous reasons why someone might have an “NRA certificate.”

I have one. It says “Life Member.” Neither Adam Lanza nor his mother were members of the NRA.

#BrettKimberlin Wants You Disarmed

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When I’ve been blogging about The Dread Pirate Kimberlin and his attacks on the Bill of Rights, I’ve been dealing with First Amendment issues so far. He is now attacking the Second Amendment as well. His 501(c)4, Velvet Revolution US, has a new subgroup called NRA Watch (No, I won’t link to their website.) that is dedicated to more gun control. (H/T, Lee Stranahan)

Among the control measures the “group” advocates are:

Banning military style assault weapons–which I suppose would include the AR15s that TDPK unlawfully possessed during his drug dealing days.

100% background checks on all gun sales–which might have caught TDPK’s straw purchasers transferring firearms to him.

Correcting the myth that the “solution to our problem is to arm more people”–which brings up the question of whose problem “our problem” is. Certainly, having guns in the hands of good guys does not solve a problem for crooks and thugs.

Well, I Feel Better Now

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Breitbart has a video up of the Vice President assuring us that we don’t have to be worried about our Constitutional rights.

Now that he’s explained that I don’t need my AR15 for protection (Joe, mine’s for deer hunting; it’s 7.62 X 39 mm, not the weaker 5.56 mm.) and now that he’s explained that all that the opposition to gun control here on the Internet has been planted by people trying to delay his good works, I understand why it’s OK to infringe a right that the Bill of Rights says “shall not be infringed.” We can’t let that pesky old scrap of paper stand in the way.

Sigh.