Month: October 2009

Another Take on Bloomberg’s Gun Show Antics

Snowflakes in Hell has a nice little write up on Bloomberg’s latest little stunt. All in all it’s summed up greatly by the last paragraph:

What’s really disgusting about Bloomberg’s tactics, is none of these transactions and dealers shown here have anything to do with gun show loophole. It’s illegal to operate as a gun dealer, for livelihood and profit, without a Federal Firearms License. It’s illegal to knowingly sell guns to criminals. In all of these cases shown, they could be prosecuted under current laws. But he’s not going to tell you that, because the goal is to get rid of gun shows.

The so-called gun show loophole is more accurately known as a private individual selling their own property to another private individual. See the federal government claims the reason they have a right to control guns is due to the commerce clause. It’s stated in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution and states:

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

It relates to powers of Congress only. It grants Congress the power to regulate inter-state commerce. The claims are wide and varied but suffice to say since guns are usually built in one state and sold in another if falls under inter-state commerce according to the federal government. Since it falls under inter-state commerce they feel they have the power to regulate it as much as they can. This is what state laws like Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act are all about. They state guns produce, sold, and used inside the state of Montana should be free of federal regulation. Likewise if you are selling your gun to another person in the state it’s not inter-state commerce and hence the reason the federal government is unable to regulate it. Since these type of sales are exempt from federal regulations they do not require the seller to perform a NICS check,which would be illegal anyways.

I’ve covered this in my Truth About Guns podcast but I will state in here as well. Bloomberg and his posse are saying we should require private sellers to run background checks on buyers. The problem is private individuals are not legally allowed to do so only Federal Firearm License holders are allowed to access it. From the FBI itself:

Authorized use of the NICS is limited to the purpose of obtaining information on whether receipt of a firearm by a prospective transferee would violate federal or state law.

FFLs, their officers, employees, agents, and/or other representatives are permitted to request background checks of the NICS only for the authorized purpose.

Accessing or using the NICS, or permitting access or use of the NICS by another, for any unauthorized purpose is a violation of federal law, sanctions for which may include criminal prosecution; a civil fine not to exceed $10,000, and/or cancellation of NICS inquiry privileges.

So FFLs, their officers, employees, agents, and/or other representatives are permitted to request background checks. Likewise allowing any other person to access the NICS is punishable by a fine up to $10,000. The only way to access the NICS system is to get an account and in order to do that you need a Federal Firearms License.

Since it’s impossible for a private dealer to access the NICS system they can not run a background check. Hence the only way to legally require a background check is to force all sales to go through a licensed dealer. This is to say in order to sell your own property you would require the involvement of a third party. That is akin to saying it’s not your own property. Imagine if you had to go through a dealership every time you wanted to sell a car.

Since car accidents kill more people than guns every year (by a wide margin) wouldn’t it make sense to require a federal license to sell automobiles? That way a background check could be performed on potential buyers and if they had a past history of criminal behavior you could deny them access to one of the biggest means of death in this country. See how stupid it sounds when applied to cars? Why is it any different from guns? Remember automobiles are involved in far more deaths every year.

The bottom line is the anti-gun crowd wants to abolish gun shows. Not because they are a potential source for criminals to get their guns (very very VERY few criminals get their guns from gun shows, Snowflakes in Hell has the information on that). No it’s because that’s where those of us fighting for our right to keep and bear arms congregate. The only way to stop a movement is to break up the crowd. The anti-gun crowd is trying this through multiple angles such as pitting hunters against those of us who use guns for self defense.

Likewise I believe they are jealous since they lack a show type to congregate. Maybe they should start having anti-gun shows. I can see it now a place full of like minded people not buying guns. They could have tables empty and devoid of firearms and firearms accessories. I’m sure that would get a huge attendance.

Health Care isn’t a Right

OK so far I’ve managed to keep myself out of the health care debate on this blog. I feel the debate is rather annoying and rouses heavily emotional arguments. Since the right to bear arms already promotes those without a good argument to use emotions I figured that subject was enough.

But alas Kevin over at the Smallest Minority did another one of his great uber-posts on why Health Care is not a right. I’d paraphrase and such but really you just need to hit the link and read what he has typed.

And since I’m posting about it I might as well just come out and say it, I’m against government provided health care. My reasoning pretty much is summed up by Kevin’s uber-post.

Bloomberg Stepping on the Fed’s Toes

Mega douche Mayor Bloomberg is at his antics again. This is coming from Says Uncle. He sent his thugs into several out of state gun shows and had them purchase firearms from private individuals. His thugs went to non-dealers (that would be private individuals like myself and probably you) and purchased firearms while apparently admitting they were from out of state and couldn’t pass a background check.

This type of “investigation” (I use the term loosely as no police were actually working on this) falls under the territory of the FBI and ATF whom apparently have told Bloomberg to knock it off before. Says Uncle has several links to stories involving Bloomberg stepping on federal agents’ toes and muddling up their investigations.

Says Uncle also has a followup post explaining very clearly that no loophole exists. The purchases and sellers both broke the law. Simply breaking the law doesn’t constitute a loophole, it constitutes breaking the law:

My issue with it is the fact that the investigation illustrated that you can break the law by breaking the law. If a person purchases a handgun out of state, they break the law. They have a webpage set up and a report in which they state they bought guns out of state (page 17). That’s illegal. Also, they engaged in straw purchases, also illegal.

So Bloomberg’s thugs broke the law while demonstrating the law can be broken. To me this seems to require police to arrest the persons committing illegal acts. See police officers can break the law as part of a string operation (which Bloomberg is calling this) in their jurisdiction. But Bloomberg’s thugs don’t appear to be police and if they were they would be New York cops and therefore out of their jurisdiction. I think the ATF should practice their history of abuse on those so called investigators.

Coming from a gun show this weekend where an out of state person tried to purchase a handgun at the table I got me Glock 30 from I can say dealers usually don’t go for this. In the case I witnessed a person had a California ID and tried to purchase a pistol and the dealer told him no way in Hell. Maybe it was one of Bloomberg’s thugs in action. If so they obviously didn’t get any takes since they never mentioned Minnesota as a state where they were operating.

Also I apologize that there isn’t a direct link to the story but the site with the actual story requires registration to read it. As a personal policy I don’t link to sites that pull that kind of shit.

Be Sure of Your Target

One of the rules of firearm safety is to be sure of your target. Well apparently that rule applies to piracy as well. A group of Somali pirates screwed up big time when they attacked a French naval vessel thinking it was a cargo ship. From the article:

“Once they realised they were facing a ship that was responding and was heading towards them, they stopped shooting and attempted to flee,” he said.

“The Somme gave chase and intercepted one of the pirates’ boats. All the weapons had apparently been tossed into the sea and the suspected pirates are now being held on board the Somme.”

So yeah if you plan on plundering ships on the high seas of Somalia you may want to make sure your targets are unarmed merchant ships. This story exemplify arming ships and their crews though. It seems the Somali pirates aren’t as inclined to board a ship when they are being shot at. Who would have guessed?

The Conspiracy to Cover Up the Zombie Threat

How many of you people heard about the most recent zombie outbreak? I’m guessing few if any. Many don’t realize this but there is a government conspiracy to cover up the zombie threat.

The University of Florida was truly prepared. Their website has a list of different disaster recovery exercises, one of which included their response to dealing with an outbreak of the undead. Well it appears the puppet masters of the government got to them as the site no longer lists the critical piece of information. Furthermore officials at the college are now on record saying the response plan was a joke.

It is high time our government realizes that covering up the zombie threat is the worst possible way to deal with it. We need to inform, and most importantly arm, the populace. Not doing this could made a small outbreak turn into a full on zombie apocalypse.

I Love the SPAS-12

Boy I can’t tell you how much I just love the SPAS-12 shotgun. It’s such an amazing piece of machinery. In fact I’ll go so far as to say it’s the greatest gun ever made by anybody ever. I mean what’s not to love? It has both semi-automatic action and pump-action modes. The safety lever that can potentially discharge the firearm when engaging adds much needed excitement to the shooting sports. But the absolute best part is the fact it actually makes me breakfast in the morning.

Did Franchi pay me to say this? You know what I don’t have to tell you shit regardless of what some people may say.

How can Anybody Take CNN Seriously After This

Wow CNN really are stretching to protect their Obamessiah from criticism. Apparently Saturday Night Live did a sketch portraying Obama in the light of an incompetent president. Although I do agree with that sentiment the honest to God’s truth is Saturday Night Life does this for a living. Political satire is something people generally enjoy. Well CNN decided to fact check the skit.

Why is it when a show based entirely around satire makes fun of the Obamessiah CNN will do fact checking but when the Brady Campaign spews out bullshit about gun shows being places where criminals can easily access firearms CNN fails to attempt any fact checking?

Google Voice Rocks

OK I just received an invitation to Google Voice and set it up. I’ve only played with it for a few seconds but it’s fucking awesome. For those of you who haven’t heard of it Google Voice is a service (invitation only at the moment sadly) where you receive a phone number from Google (you can select the number you want from a desired area code). You then enter in your phone numbers. When somebody dials your Google Voice number their service attempts to contact you by ringing all of your phones sequentially.

But the coolest part so far is if you can’t be contacted the caller is prompted to leave a voice mail. Google Voice then transcribes the voice mail to text and does two things. First is sends you an e-mail containing the transcribed message and it sends you a text message with the first part of the transcribed message. This means you don’t have to listen to the voice mail and honestly the transcription service is pretty bloody good.

It also allows you to send free text messages to people. Granted that isn’t much of a win for me since I have unlimited text messages on my plan, but still cool none the less.

Google once again surprises me with their cool services that don’t end up costing no money. I guess they do get free advertising from me via this post in the process to boot but really I don’t reach enough people for them to care.