Category: Gun Rights

Strange Success Metric

Ah yes the Brady Campaign. They claim to be against violence but in fact they are against firearm ownership. How do we know this? Well Joe Huffman looks at their rating of success. According to Helmke stopping people from buying firearms is their success metric, not whether their bullshit reduced violence.

Incorrect Response

Another story via Says Uncle today. This one is aggravating to say the least.

What was the official response to the Fort Hood tragedy? Allow our soldiers to carry on base so they could defend themselves should another nutcase decide to start shooting the place up? No. Instead we get this:

Soldiers assigned to Fort Hood will have to register their personal firearms with the director of emergency services, he added. Fort Hood is home to some 50,000 active-duty soldiers and 18,000 of the soldiers’ family members.

The lack of logic of that response leaves me dumbfounded. So the directory of emergency services will now know who on base owns personal firearms and who types of firearms they are. So if one of them decides to go on a shooting spree they’ll have a better idea of what gun was used after many of our country’s finest are slain in a gun free zone.

How the Hell is this going to help anything?

Banning Rights of Those on the Terrorist Watch List

There has been a lot of stink from the anti-gun crowd saying we need to close the “terror gap.” It’s funny how everything is a gap to these people. What they really mean is we need to deny constitutional rights to people without do process. I think everybody knows now that the terrorist watch list is a secret list of names that you don’t actually have to do anything to get on.

Well Days of Our Trailers did a great post about the terrorist watch list. From his sourced posted there is a 35% error rate of the names on that list according to a Department of Justice audit. Of course I’m sure the gun control crowd doesn’t really care about that. After all they’re only OK with you having the rights they think you should have.

A Right Doesn’t Mean It’s Mandatory

OK I’ve heard this going around by haven’t found the source. Thankfully Says Uncle found the source of this current meme. Some guy at the Washington Post has a modest proposal, require every American to own a gun by force of law. Although this article is most likely satirical in nature it does give me a pedestal to stand on while I say something.

Any right means just that, you have the right. It doesn’t mean you must exercise that right though. Even though United States code does require everybody in the militia is required to own a flintlock rifle the law doesn’t appear to be enforced. [Incorrect as pointed out by Illeix below.] Since that law isn’t enforced it’s really up to the individual whether or not they want to own a gun. And people should have that choice. I think requiring people to own guns is a poor idea.

Don’t Blame the Tiahrt Amendment

One of the memes going around the gun control crowd right now is that the Ford Hood killings would have been prevented if the Tiahrt Amendment wasn’t in place. Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell tells us why that’s not true. From his post:

What Tiahrt does is prevent ATF from spending any funds to share the entire trace database with third parties not related to a bonafide criminal investigation. It also makes the trace database undiscoverable in a civil action, and inadmissible in a civil suit. Both ATF and the Fraternal Order of Police support this measure, something MAIG won’t tell you. It does not require that NICS records be destroyed. The requirement that NICS records be destroyed is not a funding matter, but is found in the United State Code, Title 18, Section 922(t):

So the reason NICS records for cleared individuals are destroyed is because of the Brady Act not the Tiahrt Amendment. Deal with it and find a new meme.

So Much for Being a Cop Killer

We now know the killer in the Fort Hill shooting was using an FN FiveseveN. According to the media this gun is a “cop killer.” Well Massad Ayoob says not so much:

Now, I’m a little more on top of murders of police, and officer survival issues, than the average bear, and I’ve not yet found a case of a police officer being murdered with this particular handgun.

Some cop killer.

Double Double Standards

I mentioned a case of double standards yesterday. Well either there were no approved comments on that link or they weren’t showing up for me but either way I have a continuation of this article now. I just want to point out the slew of stupidity going on:

See Anne, the article author, apparently hates guns and no amount of logic will dissuade her from her apparent goal to ensure money is not given to organizations trying to fight breast cancer. Seriously she thinks the source of the money is important and gun manufacturers are bad. So user LC Scotty posts the following:

Woman shoots violent, home invading ex boyfriend.

http://blog.al.com/live/2009/10/burlgar_shot_and_killed_tuesda.html

I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data, but these sorts of stories crop up all the time.

Seems legitimate enough. A story about a women defending herself with a gun. Here’s Anne’s reply:

Isolated, anecdotal cases can always be found to justify or defend most anything.

Anne Landman

She’s also right. That’s why I present and entire blog soley about people defending themselves with guns. Choke on it! Of course an anonymous poster makes the usual, although very accurate, car argument:

What if a car manufacturer donated money for breast cancer awareness? I bet cars are involved in the deaths of many women. Oh yeah, but you don’t have an irrational fear of cars.

But Anne shows us that she’s consistant:

There’s already a breast cancer awareness Ford Mustang!

Never mind how the pollutants from the exhaust contribute to disease!

Anne Landman

Oh wait never mind:

Guns are designed for that purpose. Vehicle manufacturers have been developing and incorporating features into cars for decades to make them safer: seat belts, air bags, back-up warning alarms, sensors to detect movement behind them, etc.

Anne Landman

Of course user commander makes a good point:

Smith and Wesson has been building pink-accented “Lady Smith” guns for years now. Why is it suddenly a bad thing that they’re donating some money from the sale of those guns to cancer research?

So this isn’t something new for them but Anne is all of the sudden offended because the M&P Smith and Wesson are auctioning off is for breast cancer awareness is all of the sudden bad. Of course Anne tries to shit all over commander’s argument:

… and in this case, about selling guns.

If S&W just wanted to benefit cancer victims, why not just make a donation to a cancer research organization without pinking the product?

Anne Landman

Because the ENTIRE point behind the pink campaign is to raise AWARENESS. It’s a marketing ploy (not all of them are evil) to raise money to help research breast cancer. Anonymous donations don’t raise awareness because nobody fucking hears about them. I’m only going to post one more nugget of stupidity here. User MarshallD makes a very astute point:

Smith and Wesson and Julie Goloski have their hearts in the right place and you all should be ashamed of doubting them.

A woman with a firearm, trained on how to use it, has a greater chance of defending herself against a violent opponent much larger than herself. I feel much better knowing that my wife carries a firearm to defend herself against a criminal.

Of course Anne doesn’t understand what self defense means:

If a woman needs training in self-defense, I suggest martial arts training. That way she has something that can’t be taken away and used against her, nor can it be stolen and used against someone else.

Anne Landman

I’m sorry but in a self defense situation I want every advantage. If my attacker has a gun and is standing any reasonable distance from me what good are martial arts going to do? What if you’re up against some crazy who’s been taking PCP and can’t feel pain? Sure he won’t feel bullets but he’ll eventually bleed out while breaking limbs probably isn’t going to accomplish much.

Anyways I just wanted to point out some of the stupidity being argued there. Anne who is claiming she’s made at Smith and Wesson because they create the best method one can own for self defense, is more or less advocating those women be disarmed.

And why did I make these remarks on my blog instead of posting them on her site? Well I did post on her site but I have more leeway with my blog and I can use whatever language I feel necessary. Also I realize no amount of logical argument is going to change her mind but I want to place a record of this somewhere since I’m worried she may decide to do some comment pruning in the future.

Protect the Children with Talking Points

Snowflakes in Hell points out Michigan senator Carl Levin knows how to use talking points. The senator sent a letter to the president titled, “Guns Hurt Our Children The Most.” It’s full of such great arguments as:

Mr. President, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 3,184 children and teens died from a firearm in the United States in 2006, a six percent increase from 2005. This breaks down to the life of an American child being taken every two hours and 45 minutes by someone wielding a gun. More than five times as many, or nearly 17,500 children and teens suffered a non-fatal gun injury that year, a seven percent increase from the previous year.

Senator Levin’s solution? It’s this:

They also recommend passage of such common sense gun safety legislation as closing the gun show loophole, strengthening the Brady background check system and reauthorizing the assault weapons ban.

I highly doubt senator Levin knows what the gun show “loophole” actually is. It’s no a loophole at all but a fact of constitutional law that states congress can only regulate interstate commerce and dealings with foreign countries. If two people in the same state make a transaction congress can’t do shit about it.

Likewise how can you strengthen the Brady background check? The system can already single handedly deny a person their right to bear arms. How can you get much stronger? Allow a denial from a background check to land somebody in prison? Seriously I wish representatives would think before they talk.

Finally what the Hell is banning “assault” weapons going to accomplish? Most murders and accidents are done with handguns not long arms. You would think that anti-gunners would be going after handguns instead. And this is one of their fatal flaws they don’t use logic in their crusade against our rights and the truth.