A Geek With Guns

Usually the gun rights front here in Minnesota is relatively quiet. That is until Mr. Paymar gets a bug up his butt and decides to introduce anti-gun legislation. This is more of a heads up than anything since I just got NRA-ILA alert today (Sorry I’ve been busy). The two previously mentioned anti-gun laws are being heard today by the Crime Victims/Criminal Records Sub-Committee at noon. My last letter writing efforts went out to everybody on all three of the involved committees but phone calls in the next hour certainly won’t hurt. The bills are:

House File 2960 would force private sales at gun shows to go through background checks. Gun prohibitionists, like Representative Paymar, falsely claim that a large number of criminals get their guns from gun shows; however, the most recent federal study on gun shows put the figure at only 0.7 percent. This effort is a stepping stone for gun control advocates seeking to ban all private sales, even among family and friends.

House File 1396 includes a provision that would allow a court that issues a domestic abuse protective order to prohibit the respondent from having any contact with a PET OR COMPANION ANIMAL OWNED, POSSESSED, OR KEPT by a party protected in the order. This new provision could have serious consequences for Minnesotans who exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

The first one is obviously the one I’m most worried about. Minnesota is a pretty leftist state and these kinds of bill do have a chance of getting through. The last thing I want is to be legally required to beg the government for permission to sell my private property. Let’s hope these two get shut down in committee.

What do you do if you don’t have facts and logic on your side? Claim the other side has a small penis of course! Now that’s showing tact.

Anybody following any gun rights sites as of late knows there is an ongoing drama fest with Starbucks. The drama is being create by the mostly irrelevant Brady Campaign Against Good Ideas. The Brady Bunch want Starbucks to ban weapons from their establishments while Starbucks doesn’t want to get involved in this debate.

Joe Huffman makes a good point in this debate. The best thing we pro-gun people can do is quietly go about our business, patronize Starbucks, and not make an issue of this. Let’s show the Brady Bunch how irrelevant they really are and ignore their little whine fest and let Starbucks have their wish of staying out of the gun issue.

I guess we can put this down and good news and bad news. The committee has discussed Paymar’s bill that would make private sales of firearms illegal in this state and did not vote on it. On one hand we don’t have to deal with it immediately but it very well could (and most likely will) come back at a later date.

I’m been harping about Representative Paymar’s attempt to destroy the property rights of gun owners here in Minnesota. Well since my place of business gets a subscription to the Star Tribune I thought I’d check the Letters to the Editor section and see if anybody wrote about it. Two people did and they obviously don’t understand private property either. The first was written by Stephen Harlan-Marks of Robbinsdale:

Before gun lovers get the idea that state Rep. Michael Paymar’s gun show bill would take rifles from hunters or even handguns from those who feel they need them for protection (“Effort to tighten Minnesota’s gun law getting folks riled up,” March 3), let’s be clear about the bill’s objective. How many Minnesotans think anyone who wishes should be allowed to walk into a gun show and buy 10 AK-47s without a background check, much less a look at the terror watch list? I can’t imagine anyone needing sort of firepower to shoot pheasants or even to ward off a would-be burglar.

The second letter was penned by Peter Clark of Roseville:

Interesting and shocking: On the front page, an article about how upset some people would be if they had to get a permit to buy a gun at a gun show. Then on the first page of the Twin Cities section, the headline “‘Please don’t kill nobody else’”. Maybe gun advocates should pause and think about what they would say if one of their family members were shot down. Remember, guns don’t kill people — people with guns kill people. Thank you, Rep. Paymar, for wanting to set things right. It’s far too easy to get guns today.

So to counter the ignorance I sent the following letter:

After reading a couple letters to the editor dealing with Representative Paymar’s “gun show” bill I believe several facts need to be stated. First and foremost this bill isn’t about gun shows it’s about private sales. Here in Minnesota if I want to sell a firearm, my personal property, I may do so without going through a federally licensed dealer. Paymar’s bill is an attempt to eliminate that right. Private individuals are not allowed to use the FBI’s NICS background check system therefore, if this bill passes, anybody in Minnesota who wants to sell a firearm would have to pay a federally licensed dealer to perform the background check and do the transfer.

The reason gun shows are brought into this is because people will go to gun shows to sell their firearms. However a massive majority of people selling firearms at gun shows are federally licensed dealers and therefore must perform background checks. Additionally a private individual can only sell so many firearms before the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) considers that person to be “in the business” and thus must obtain a federal firearms license. So you will not have private individuals selling “10 AK-47s” at a gun show.

Let’s look at a few other facts. The ATF did a study where they concluded that less than 2% of firearms obtained by criminals were purchased at gun shows. Furthermore background checks do not prevent anything. The killers at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood both used legally purchased firearms from federally licensed dealers. This means background checks were performed on both killers.

Finally the number of guns being purchased by Minnesotans has skyrocketed while our rate of violent crime has been plummeting. In this environment why is there a need to add further government interference and burden to the lives on Minnesotans?

Of course being the paper’s nickname is the Red Star for a reason I doubt mine will ever get printed.

Usually Minnesota is pretty quiet on the gun rights front but this week has been an exception. Representative Paymar’s bill HF2960 which is attempting to end private sales of firearms in this state is being heard on Friday. We need to make sure it gets no further than the sub-committee. To that end we need to call and e-mail (Written letters won’t arrive on time sadly) all members of the sub-committee and tell them to oppose this bill. Here is the list of people on the committee:

Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL-60A)
651-296-0171
rep.margaret.kelliher@house.mn

Majority Leader Tony Sertich (DFL-5B)
651-296-0172
rep.tony.sertich@house.mn

Sub-Committee on Crime Victims/Criminal Records

State Representative Debra Hilstrom (DFL-46B)
651-296-3709
rep.debra.hilstrom@house.mn

State Representative Kory Kath (DFL-26A)
651-296-5368
rep.kory.kath@house.mn

State Representative Paul Kohls (R-34A)
651-296-4282
rep.paul.kohls@house.mn

State Representative John Lesch (DFL-66A)
651-296-4224
rep.john.lesch@house.mn

State Representative Dave Olin (DFL-1A)
651-296-9635
rep.dave.olin@house.mn

State Representative Ron Shimanski (R-18A)
651-296-1534
rep.ron.shimanski@house.mn

State Representative Jenifer Loon (R-42B)
651-296-7449
rep.jenifer.loon@house.mn

Let’s shut this down people.

And by arms I mean money. Snowflakes in Hell dropped a note letting us in on an anti-gunner plan to get Starbucks politically involved. So far Starbucks has been good and simply refused to get involved in politics, let’s do what we can to keep it that way.

At 10:30 some anti-gun loon by the name of Abby Spangler is going to perform a lie in at the flagship Starbucks in Seattle. What Bitter is suggesting is that all you Seattle pro-gun nuts do is go in, buy something, and tell the Starbucks employee that you hope their store won’t get involved in politics because of those loonies outside.

Sounds like a great plan to me.

A transcript of the oral arguments from today have been posted here. Go have a read.

A couple of sources are releasing summaries of the oral arguments today. The first one is Business Week’s write up which can be found here. SCOTUS Blog also has a write up.

Both seem to come to the same conclusion. It appears that incorporation though the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th amendment isn’t likely. On the upside it seems likely incorporation will happen but through the due process clause of the same amendment.

Getting incorporation period is a huge victory and I’m not going to be to picky on how we do it.

There’s less of it in Washington D.C. now according to this article:

The year after the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and gun-lock requirements, the capital city’s murder rate plummeted 25 percent. The high court should keep that in mind today as it hears oral arguments about a Chicago handgun ban.

I though the anti-gunners said that more blood would be flowing in the streets, not less.