Category: Gun Rights

Focus On The Situation, Not The Tool

An anti-gunner walks into a bar, err, a restaurant. He sees somebody there minding their own business. That person happens to be openly carrying a firearm and doesn’t have a badge so the anti-gunner feels the need to write a lengthy piece of hysterical nonsense. I’ll save you most of the crap and cut right to answering the questions he puts forth:

How am I, just an average person, supposed to know if the person with the firearm is a “good guy” or a “bad guy?”

How am I, just an average person, supposed to know if any stranger I meet is a “good guy” or “bad guy?” Most anti-gunners only freak out when they see a person without a badge openly carrying a firearm. Truth be told I could just go buy a police uniform and one of those completely asinine “concealed carry badges” and most anti-gunners would be perfectly fine with me openly carrying a firearm (and violent individuals do that specifically because it assists them in approaching their target).

There is no sure way to distinguish “good guys” from “bad guys.” This is why so many of us carry firearms. While 99.99 percent (number pulled out of my ass to illustrate a sizable majority) of people are good, or at least good enough not to be a direct threat to my life, there is that tiny percentage of the population that may decide shooting up the restaurant I’m eating at sounds like the makings for a fun afternoon. Since I can’t tell who they are I can only ensure I have the tools necessary to defend against them if I should encounter them.

Generally speaking though if the person with the holstered firearm isn’t shooting at random people there’s a very good chance they’re one of the “good guys.”

Suppose that I am armed, too. Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a “bad guy,” and take the chance of killing a “good guy,” or should I hold my fire and take the chance that the other person will not be a “bad guy” or be a “good guy” and think I am a “bad guy” and fire at me first?

Is there a secret handshake that “good guys” use to identify each other? If so, what if a “bad guy” uses that secret handshake to pretend he is a “good guy” and then performs his nefarious acts?

It’s very simple actually. Hold your fire until there’s an immediate threat that you reasonable believe could kill you or cause great bodily harm? If the person in the restaurant has their firearm holstered they are not an immediate threat because holstered firearms can’t hurt anybody.

I’d be more concerned about the random person walking up to me asking to borrow a lighter for their cigarette (because I don’t smoke and one should therefore not assume I have a lighter) than an openly armed person sitting at a restaurant eating a meal. The former is creating a situation that gives them a plausible reason to close distance, which means they could be a deadly threat if they have a conceal knife, whereas the latter isn’t approaching me or trying to involve me in their business.

In my experience anti-gunners are poor risk at risk assessment. They focus on the tool as the threat instead of the person. People don’t need firearms to be dangerous but having a firearm greatly increases your odds of survival if you’re attacked by a dangerous person. Focusing on individuals openly carrying a firearm is especially poor risk assessment. Most violent individuals try to conceal the fact that they’re a threat until they get close. They want to appear friendly and unarmed so you let them get close enough to take you by surprise.

If you are worried about identifying “good guys” and “bad guys” pay attention to the situation and your gut instinct. Threats will try to create a situation that is favorable to them. As a human being you a gifted with a great ability to read other human beings. If a violent individual is creating a situation that favors them they are likely doing other things that will make the little voice in your head say, “I think he’s bad, you should flee.” Learn to identify those situations and don’t dismiss that little voice as mere paranoia. Those two things, which many of us refer to as “situational awareness”, will do more to increase your odds of survival than focusing on tools such as firearms.

Without Government Who Would Arm The Terrorists

What’s the most effective way reduce gun violence in the United States? According to those who oppose self-defense mandating background checks for every firearm transfer would reduce gun violence. It’s an idea that sounds good to a lot of people on paper but only because they haven’t stopped to think about what that entails. Background checks require government approval for firearm transfers. Mandating background checks for every firearm transfer would, according to opponents of self-defense, ensure bad guys couldn’t acquire firearms. The biggest flaw in this plan is that it relies on government, which is more than happy to provide firearms to violent individuals:

Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.

At the time, Lone Wolf Trading Co. was known among gun smugglers for selling illegal firearms. And with Soofi’s history of misdemeanor drug and assault charges, there was a chance his purchase might raise red flags in the federal screening process.

Inside the store, he fudged some facts on the form required of would-be gun buyers.

What Soofi could not have known was that Lone Wolf was at the center of a federal sting operation known as Fast and Furious, targeting Mexican drug lords and traffickers. The idea of the secret program was to allow Lone Wolf to sell illegal weapons to criminals and straw purchasers, and track the guns back to large smuggling networks and drug cartels.

Instead, federal agents lost track of the weapons and the operation became a fiasco, particularly after several of the missing guns were linked to shootings in Mexico and the 2010 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.

This is actually the same flaw every plan that relies on government suffers. How can you rely on an entity that steals, kidnaps, assaults, and murders people to stop theft, kidnappings, assaults, and murders? Do you really think an entity that drops bombs on child in foreign countries and pardons the violent actions of its law enforcers is going to have any moral opposition to handing a firearm to a person known to have a history of violence? Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) operation that involved selling firearms to people suspected of being involved with violent drug cartels. Supposedly the operation was meant to track where the firearms went. Those firearms did end up in the hands of drug cartels but the ATF didn’t do a very good job of tracking them.

A background check systems can’t work if it relies on an entity that is motivated to provide firearms to violent people. Since the government is motivated to do exactly that the background check system supported by opponents of self-defense can’t decrease gun violence.

This Is How The Brady Campaign Treats Those It Exploits For Public Relations

After the shooting in Aurora, Colorado the Brady Campaign found a family to sucker into filing a frivolous lawsuit against Lucky Gunner, the website the shooter ordered his ammunition from. The judge threw out the case and ordered the plaintiff to pay Lucky Gunner’s legal fees. Everybody following this lawsuit has been wondering if the plaintiff would appeal the decision. Now they’ve made an official statement saying they won’t:

Since a federal judge ordered the parents of a victim killed in the Aurora theater massacre to pay more than $200,000 in the defendants’ court costs, they said they’re forced to drop their appeal of the ruling because another loss may force them into bankruptcy.

[…]

With attorneys from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the couple sued Lucky Gunner and other retailers with the intended goal of changing company policy and ultimately public policy in regard to gun and ammo sales as opposed to monetary gain.

This should serve as a cautionary tale not to get involved with the Brady Campaign. If the family is concerned that they would be forced into bankruptcy if they appealed the decision then the Brady Campaign must not be covering the costs. You would think the organization would do the right thing and back up the plaintiffs it has been abusing for public relations purposed. But like so much trash the family has apparently been discarded.

Stopping Active Shooters Is About Armed Resistance, Not Special Training

The Trace, an anti-self-defense rag masquerading as a news source, posted what may be one of the dumbest arguments against arming, well, anybody but soldiers at recruitment centers specifically:

Most armed service members are not trained to neutralize active shooters, and putting more loaded guns in their hands creates its own risks.

[…]

Most service members — 99 percent of airmen, 88 percent of sailors, and about two-thirds of soldiers and Marines — are not in direct combat roles, but instead are technical workers whose specialties support those “tip of the spear” troops. These include navigators, supply clerks, water purification specialists, and camera crews. Roughly the same breakdown applies to the backgrounds of recruiters and reservists. Practically speaking, this means that your average military member’s firearms experience may only go as far as some boot camp familiarization with a service rifle on a “static range,” plinking at paper targets to qualify for a marksmanship ribbon.

I’ll be sure to tell my friend who was a helicopter mechanic in the Marines that his firearms training amounted to little more than plinking at paper on a range. Less I digress further into the firearm training military personnel receive let me make my point. Stopping an active shooter, in most cases, doesn’t require any special training. All that’s required are bullets moving towards the shooter. As it turns out most active shooters commit suicide upon meeting armed resistance:

But as much as we would like to confront the active shooter with multiple officers, the reality is that we are almost always in a reactive posture, and time is working in favor of the shooter. More often than not, we must wait for the incident to unfold before we are able to interject ourselves into the fray. Depending on the venue, whether it occurs in a big city or an isolated rural community, that response with well-trained responders may be a while in arriving.

Therefore, the individual officer becomes our best asset. Ideally, we’d like to have a response in which we send in several similarly trained officers, but that may not always be possible. Thus, the responsibility rests with the first car on the scene, and in these types of incidents it’s important to get inside and act quickly. By doing this, we interrupt the killer’s plan and his activity. This rapid interdiction is critical to saving lives.

However, quickly inserting oneself into the active shooter situation does not mean running blindly into a gun battle. Rather, it simply means stopping the shooter as fast as possible, either by lethal means or by the mere fact that he knows law enforcement is present. That knowledge alone, that cops are on scene, has ended the carnage in many instances and caused the gunman to commit suicide.

Therefore, the key to reacting to an active shooter situation is rapid response – get on scene and inside as quickly as possible.

Police “training” for active shooter responses is for the first officer on the scene to move in and start sending bullets at the shooter. That’s because response time is the key factor for how long an active shooter scenario will play out. The sooner somebody is able to provide armed resistance to an active shooter the sooner the situation stops in a vast majority of cases. The “training” that is supposedly absent from boot camp is having a gun and using it to shoot at the active shooter. Anybody who has gone through basic training in any branch of the military can handle that. Hell, I can handle that.

There isn’t a good argument against armed individuals at the scene being the most effective way to resolve active shootings. An active shooting is a scenario where, in the vast majority of cases, accuracy and tactics aren’t the primary deciding factors in how quickly it stops. Even a man at the scene wearing a stylish tactical neon shirt and camouflage Crocs armed with a potentially felonious foregrip equipped sightless AR-pattern pistol would be more effective against an active shooter than waiting for police to respond.

i-hear-sights-are-niceStill more effective than waiting for police to respond.

Why Political Fights Never Cease

If you are involved in a political issue or even pay attention to one you know that the battle never ends. Take self-defense, for example. Recently the right of self-defense has been making gains in legislatures of the federal and many state governments. But the fight isn’t even close to ending because opponents to self-defense are finding new political tools to make people defenseless. Seattle is looking to restrict the right to self-defense not by passing a prohibition but by creating a new tax:

City Council President Tim Burgess has proposed a tax on every firearm and round of ammo sold in the city, which would be used to fund gun violence prevention programs.

The tax, which would amount to $25 on each modern firearm and 5 cents on each round of ammunition, is expected to skim as much as a $500,000 per year from the wallets of gun owners, the Seattle Times reports. This figure would be in addition to the various state and local retail taxes that approach 9.6 percent in the city already.

If prohibitions aren’t working just raise the costs until they’re prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest! Herein lies the issue with political issues of all sorts. No matter what gains are made your opponents will find a new avenue to attack you. Now that legislation isn’t working to the anti-self-defense crowd’s favor they’re looking at adding taxes to ensure poor people are unable to defend themselves. They are also looking at regulations that requires jumping through hoops to discourage people from obtaining a means to defend themselves.

Politics is disgusting business because governments wield monopoly power and can therefore do whatever they want. With that being the case there is an infinite number of ways to use the government to screw people over. If one arm of the government isn’t beating your opponents for you you just need to pay off another arm. That’s why no fight over a political issue will be done until the state has been abolished in its entirety.

Show Some Home Team Love

Not only does the Brady Center have to pay Lucky Gunner’s legal fees but Lucky Gunner is going to donate that money to gun rights groups:

The Brady Center predictably appealed the judge’s ruling and we are prepared to continue defending your rights and ours. While it is not yet clear when the $111,971.10 fee reimbursement will be paid, we are going to donate 100% of what is recovered to groups that support and defend the 2nd Amendment. We will fight to recover these funds from the Brady Center and to hold the Brady Center responsible for yet another frivolous lawsuit.

Please tell us where you want the recovered fees to go by voting in the form below. A number of organizations were added per shooter requests on June 23. We will end the voting on August 1, 2015. Once we have recovered the fees, we’ll cut checks to each organization receiving votes on a percentage basis. In other words, if “Organization A” gets 5% of the vote, it will receive 5% of whatever is recovered.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) is one of the organizations on the ballot. I’m sure our home team guys would appreciate you casting a vote for them. It would be nice to know that the Brady Center helped contribute something to whatever gun rights battle appears in this state’s future.

Contacting Lucky Gunner and expressing thanks for doing this probably wouldn’t hurt either.

Brady Center Ordered to Pay Legal Fees to Ammunition Seller it Brought a Frivolous Lawsuit Against

The Brady Center hasn’t been faring well these last several years. As money quickly dries up it has resorted to the tactic used by so many failed organizations, extracting money from those who have it through frivolous lawsuits. After the shooting in Aurora, Colorado the Brady Center brought a lawsuit against the online ammunition seller Lucky Gunner claiming it was somehow responsible for the shooter’s actions (I don’t get it either but bear with me). Not only was the lawsuit thrown out but a judge ordered the Brady Center to pay Lucky Gunner’s legal fees:

A federal judge has ordered that the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence pay the legal fees of an online ammunition dealer it sued for the Aurora movie theater shooting.

The order, which was issued last week, comes after Judge Richard P. Matsch dismissed the gun control group’s suit that sought to hold Lucky Gunner legally responsible for the 2012 shooting. The Brady Center had argued in their suit that the way Lucky Gunner sells ammunition is “unreasonably dangerous and create a public nuisance.”

[…]

Judge Matsch disagreed with the Brady Center’s argument. He said the suit was filed for propaganda purposes. “It is apparent that this case was filed to pursue the political purposes of the Brady Center and, given the failure to present any cognizable legal claim, bringing these defendants into the Colorado court where the prosecution of James Holmes was proceeding appears to be more of an opportunity to propagandize the public and stigmatize the defendants than to obtain a court order,” he said in his order.

It seems Judge Matsch didn’t appreciate being used as the Brady Center’s political pawn. He was spot on when he said the lawsuit was filed purely as a propaganda (and desperate fundraising) stunt. Lucky Gunner, as with anybody who sells goods or services, cannot know what customers are going to do with their purchases. Holding Lucky Gunner culpable for the events in Aurora would be no different than holding Apple responsible for a hacker using a MacBook Pro to break into a company network and stealing customer credit card data.

Now the Brady Center faces a tough question, does it have enough loose change under its sofa cushions to pay Lucky Gunner’s legal fees? Wouldn’t be amusing if this propaganda stunt ends up forcing the Brady Center into insolvency?

The Hardships Involved with Supporting Both Gun Rights and Gay Rights

Readers of my blog and people who know me in meatspace are aware of my absolutist positions on both gun and gay rights. I’m one of those people who believes you should be allowed to marry whoever you want and defend yourself against those who would attack you for living a life they find unacceptable. Unfortunately gun and gay rights activists often clash. Many people on the gun rights side, being devout Christians and social conservatives, strongly oppose legalizing same-sex marriage. Meanwhile many gay rights activists, being devout neoliberals, strongly oppose repealing gun restrictions. Both sides believe their respective gods, those being the Christian God and the state, have handed them a divine mission to force the world into submitting to their central plan. Being stuck in the middle can I often find myself unwelcome in both groups. And it seems I’m not alone:

The right to marry clashed with the right to carry over the weekend in Olympia, Washington, when members of the state’s Libertarian Party were barred from a gay pride event because of their support for the Second Amendment.

Last weekend marked the 25th anniversary of the Capital City Pride festival in the Evergreen State, and the Libertarian Party of Washington planned to attend the festival and man a booth — just like in the years past. However, when an attendee called the event’s organizers to ask if open carry would be allowed throughout the festival, the libertarians suddenly found themselves barred from the festivities.

[…]

Other than the voicemail Holcomb received the day before the festival, allegedly no other members of the LPWA — including those who registered for the booth — were informed that the entire party was no longer welcome at the inclusive event. It wasn’t until a LPWA booth organizer, Edwin Pole, showed up at 8 a.m. on Saturday that he was told he could no longer attend.

“She was absolutely, really overacting,” Pole told TheBlaze in an interview. “We were complying.”

Pole told TheBlaze that both he and Holcomb showed up to the event unarmed, and that while the LPWA had discussed whether or not they wanted to promote gun rights in the booth this year, they ultimately decided against it long before the confrontation with Schlecht. Pole said LPWA members had been asked to show up to the festival unarmed.

This is the kind of inconsistent advocacy that really pisses me off. I make no apologies for being an absolutist when it comes to things I consider to be rights. Voluntary association, which is what I consider any form of voluntary marriage to be, and self-defense, which is what laws removing restrictions on carrying firearms enable, are two of those things. In fact I cannot take anybody seriously who calls themselves an advocate of rights and doesn’t entirely oppose any restriction against voluntary association or self-defense. That’s not to say I believe you are required to carry a gun or have to personally endorse same-sex marriages but if you support any state restriction against either I don’t believe you have any grounds to call yourself an advocate of rights.

So I get a little pissy when I see gun rights activists opposing legalizing same-sex marriages and gay rights activists opposing people’s ability to defend themselves. And I get especially pissy when I see either side justifying their opposition by tying the thing they hate to a horrible event or organization:

Pole said he personally paid the $100 for the booth himself and did not take a check Schlecht allegedly attempted to shove into his notebook Saturday morning. He said that while the check was to reimburse for the cost of the booth, it was “not sufficient” as it did not compensate LPWA for the additional money, time and resources the organization had used in an attempt to get ready for the festival.

Aside from the check, Schlecht provided the LPWA members with a handwritten note that explained Capital City Pride’s decision to take away their booth.

“You and your associates are completely free to exercise your 1st Amendment rights to free speech in & around our fair grounds,” the note signed by Schlecht said. “You and your associates are free to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights. And be advised that your supreme insensitivity to the recent church shooting in Charleston will be duly noted by festival participants.”

Self-defense and the shooting in Charleston are in no way related. Not one damn way. The comparable action from the other side would be if a gun rights activist told a gay person that they couldn’t attend a gun rights rally on account of a mentally deranged gay man killing several straight people in an entirely different city. By trying to demonize gun rights supporters by insinuating they are somehow related to the shooting in Charleston Schlecht is being so blatantly dishonest that she should be embarrassed to the point of resigning her position. In fact if I were in charge of the event I would fire her immediately for such dishonest behavior. She doesn’t give a shit about rights so I see no reason she should be involved with an event advocating rights.

Speaking of the event itself, I’ve always been of the opinion that gay pride festivals should have as many firearms present as rainbow flags. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community are frequent targets of violent attacks. The Stonewall riots, for example, were the result of one such attack by police officers. So if anybody should understand the need for having access to an immediate, effective means of self-defense it should be members of the LGBT community. It’s actually depressing to see so many gay rights activists also supporting the oppression of the LGBT community by opposing attempts to repeal restrictions on gun ownership and carrying.

Before I end this post I’d like to take a semi-related aside. Anybody who knows their history of esoteric politics may see a lot of similarities between this event and the idea behind the Guns and Dope Party. Back in the day a wise man realized that if you had all of the cannabis users and gun owners in the country united you’d have a majority of the voter base. The only problem was that the cannabis users and gun owners tended, and still tend, not to like one another. So he conceived of the Guns and Dope Party to unite the two factions and bring liberty to the land. Since you live in this tyrannical shit hole with me you know that the two groups’ hatred for one another won out. Sadly history appears to be repeating itself, which just further shows that divide and conquer is an effective strategy when you’re the ruler and want to prevent your power from being toppled.

Self-Defense Comes to Puerto Rico

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), whose site now requires enabling JavaScript to view textual content and therefore pisses me off to the point where I really considered not linking to them, notes that a court ruling in Puerto Rico has eliminated the island nation’s firearm registry and licensing requirements to purchase and carry a firearm:

As of now, according to Sandra Barreras with Ladies of the Second Amendment (LSA), the group that brought the lawsuit, “there is no regulation to purchase or carry (and) all purchases will be handled in accordance with federal firearms regulations.” LSA is affiliated with SAF through the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR).

The class-action lawsuit challenged various articles in Puerto Rico’s gun law, which the court declared unconstitutional. Because of the ruling, Barreras said, Puerto Ricans may now carry openly or concealed without a permit, and they do not need to obtain a permit before purchasing a firearm.

This was a class action lawsuit involving more than 850 individual plaintiffs, she reported to SAF offices. The news was greeted with delight, especially because in reaching its decision, the court cited the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court cases, and the recent ruling in Palmer v. District of Columbia. Both the McDonald and Palmer cases were won by SAF.

It’s nice to hear some positive self-defense news coming from outside of the United States proper. I also find the amount of resources the state will stick into keeping the people under its rule from having an effective means of self-defense telling. Instead of simply abolishing the registry and licensing requirement as soon as somebody stated an objection the government of Puerto Rico enforced the laws and even invested resources into making an argument for keeping them in its own courts (when you can’t convince yourself registries and licenses are necessary then they truly aren’t). That really shows just how much states prefer their victims to be unable to fight back against both itself and any of its ilk (that is to say non-state robbers, attackers, and murders).

Uber Wants Defenseless Drivers and Passengers

I’ve watched ride sharing companies Uber and Lyft with a great deal of interest. The idea of having a system where vehicle owners can connect with people wanting ride to the benefit of both appeals to me. But I’ve always been put off by both services’ centralized nature. Centralized systems are too easy for the state to regulate or shutdown and lend themselves too well to the central authority placing every stricter rules on the users. Uber has decided to flex its centralized power by banning both drivers and passengers from carrying firearms while using its service:

Uber Technologies says it is banning firearms of any kind during rides arranged through the Uber platform, and drivers or riders who violate the rule may lose access to the platform. The rules also apply to Uber’s affiliates.

The company said Friday it changed its firearms policy on June 10 to make sure riders and drivers feel comfortable. In a statement, Uber said it made the change after reviewing feedback from both passengers and Uber drivers. Previously it had deferred to local law on the issue.

I could point out concealed means concealed and that Uber doesn’t have an legal authority so carrying while using its service isn’t criminal. But I firmly believe if a company doesn’t want to do business with me then I don’t want to do business with it. I’m also of the opinion that it should be up to the driver, the person who owns the vehicle after all, to decide what they do and do not want to allow in their vehicle. A decentralized ride sharing service would allows drivers to make such decisions.

This announcement is rather ironic though. Whereas most companies that announce gun prohibitions don’t have a history involving firearms Uber does. One of its drivers actually prevented a mass shooting:

A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. Friday in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.
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The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records. Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said. No other injuries were reported.

With this new policy Uber is effectively saying it would have preferred if more people had died in that incident. I don’t want to do business with a company that doesn’t want to do business with me and I certainly don’t want to do business with a company that would rather people die than its drivers and passengers be armed.