Gun Rights – Page 16 – A Geek With Guns

Residency Requirement for Buying Handguns Struck Down

Since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 it has been prohibited for individuals without a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to purchase a handgun outside of their own state. If you wanted to acquire a handgun from an individual or dealer in another state it had to be transferred to an FFL in your state. A federal district court in Texas just ruled that provision of the Gun Control Act unconstitutional:

A federal district court in Texas overturned a 1968 gun law prohibiting the sale of handguns to out-of-state residents, granting those who live in Washington, D.C., the ability to travel to an out-of-state gun store, buy a handgun and bring it home without a middleman.

The ruling takes aim at the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which prohibited handgun sales to out-of-state residents and was defended by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who argued that the law doesn’t violate the Second Amendment.

Proponents of lifting the ban said the 1968 law had become dated given technological advances in instant background checks, which are performed every time a gun is purchased from a federally licensed firearm dealer. It also prohibited a robust national handgun market from developing, as rifles and shotguns can be purchased regardless of state residency, but handguns are not.

This is good news since the restriction made no sense when it was passed and makes even less sense now. However I’m guessing federally licensed dealers aren’t going to start selling handguns to out of state buyers until the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) give them permission. Angering the ATF, which is very easy to do, is a quick way to lose your FFL and therefore your business.

As the story notes the real winners will be the residents of Washington DC since the city has no federally licensed dealers.

Michael Bloomberg Demonstrates the Racist Nature of Gun Control

History isn’t a topic researched thoroughly by enough Americans. This is unfortunate because history has so much to teach. Consider the modern gun control movement. Few proponents of gun control realize that their movement was founded on racist ideas. Gun control in the United States started as a way to prevent newly free blacks from acquiring arms. If you want a quick overview of this history the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership put together a good documentary a few years back:

For those who prefer to read history Clayton Cramer put together a short, well-cited summary. The more things change the more they stay the same. Today the big player in American gun control is Michael Bloomberg. Considering his stated support for the New York Police Department’s stop and risk program, which heavily discriminated against black and Hispanic individuals, it’s not surprising to see racist motives in his push for gun control:

Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group’s hands and keep them alive, he said.

Statistics are a funny thing. If you massage numbers properly you can get whatever result you want. But if you look at the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) Uniform Crime Report for 2013 you will see that the age range of 15 to 25 isn’t the majority. There were 12,253 murders reported in 2013 and a majority of the victims fell in the age bracket of 25 and above. Furthermore 5,537 victims were white, 6,261 were black, 308 were listed as other, and 147 were unknown. Nowhere could you get the 95 percent figure Bloomberg cites.

But it’s not surprising, considering his above mentioned history, that he’s specifically targeting young male minorities. History of the gun control movement, after all, arose because people wanted to disarm that particular segment of society. Even so it’s rare that you see a gun control proponent so openly state such a desire.

People Shouldn’t Wish Violent Criminals Be Armed

As I was combing through the Internet I came across a rather interesting article titled Why Your Gun Makes Me Nervous. The reason I found the article interesting is because of the first two paragraphs:

There’s a mantra quickly repeating in my head: “Please have a badge. Please have a badge. Please have a badge.” It’s a steady heartbeat as I begin a conversation with a shop clerk and reposition myself so I can peer over her shoulder.

I’ve already seen the bulge in his jacket, and it’s clear from the size and shape that he has a holstered gun. Now my eyes are quickly scanning, hoping to find a law enforcement badge clipped to his belt.

The author wrote an article to explain why guns make her nervous but her two opening paragraphs describe her desire that the person she spotted carrying a gun be a member of a violent gang. You could simply replace her first sentence with “Please have the appropriate gang colors. Please have the appropriate gang colors. Please have the appropriate gang colors.”

I can sort of understand a person being nervous seeing an armed individual in public just because it’s not something thought to be common. But for some reason many people nervous about seeing armed individuals are at ease when they see a badge. A badge, mind you, that indicates the individual’s job involves expropriating wealth from the populace and kidnapping people who break arbitrary laws written by men in marble buildings.

Consider this excerpt from the article:

I do not know this man, have no knowledge of his profession, personality or character. I am unaware of his mental state, of why he feels the need to carry a weapon into a bookstore.

When I see a cop I don’t know them, their personality, or character. I am also unaware of their mental state or why they feel the need to have a job that requires initiating violence against nonviolent people. In fact a badge doesn’t reliable tell you what an individual’s profession is since anybody can get a badge and pretend to be a cop.

Everything the author wrote about the armed individual is equally applicable to a police officer. The only difference is that a cop’s job is to put your in a cage whereas any other armed individual is probably just in the bookstore to buy a book.

DEA Planned to Surveil Arizona Gun Show Attendees

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is building a system to track motorists throughout the country. Part of the system likely relies on license plate readers. But this isn’t the first incident where the DEA planned to use license plate readers to track Americans. In 2009 the DEA was planning to use them to track attendees of gun shows in Arizona:

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives collaborated on plans to monitor gun show attendees using automatic license plate readers, according to a newly disclosed DEA email obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act.

The April 2009 email states that “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the gun shows, to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.” The government redacted the rest of the email, but when we received this document we concluded that these agencies used license plate readers to collect information about law-abiding citizens attending gun shows. An automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one’s presence noted in a DEA database.

Responding to inquiries about the document, the DEA said that the monitoring of gun shows was merely a proposal and was never implemented.

Call me skeptical but for some reason I don’t believe the DEA’s claim that it never implemented this strategy. But that is largely irrelevant now that it is implementing a nationwide system that will track motorists indiscriminately. What this proposal does show is that the technology, while indiscriminate in nature, can be used in a discriminatory manner.

Tracking attendees of gun shows is just one example of the type of discrimination widespread surveillance lends itself to. This technology could just as easily be used to identify attendees of a cannabis legalization or gay rights rally. Once you have that type of information in hand you can use it for either legal harassment or blackmail. Imagine the DEA using the fact that somebody attended a gun show and a cannabis legalization rally as probably cause to investigate somebody on the grounds that they may be a user of unlawful substances in possession of a firearm. Even if such evidence isn’t enough to bring charges it is enough to harass and badger the person.

This is the future George Orwell warned us about. I think we’ve reached the post of a boot stamping a human face — forever.

The ATF is Solely Responsible for Its Ruling

Gun owners, like libertarians, a very good at eating their own. Nowhere is this more prevalent than the conversations that have been surrounding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’s (ATF) ruling that holding a gun wrong is a felony. You would think gun owners would be focusing in their wrath on the ATF but many seem to view fellow gun owners are the true culprits.

When the arm braces were released we all knew they were going to get an unfavorable ruling from the ATF eventually. Many gun owners wrote into the ATF requesting clarification on numerous corner cases involving arm braces. Some of the requests were serious but most of them were humorous. Apparently these requests are what caused the ATF to issue its ruling and we should therefore all scorn the gun owners who made those requests.

This is bullshit. Pure unadulterated bullshit. We all knew the ATF was going to issue this ruling eventually. After all, if there’s one thing the ATF hates more than gun owners it’s fun. I’m fairly certain the ATF has a staff that just combs YouTube for videos of people having fun with firearms and tries to figure out how to make those activities illegal. As soon as videos started popping up of gun owners having fun with arm braces it was over. The ATF detected fun and it was going to swoop in to stop it.

All of you who are blaming fellow gun owners for the ATF’s actions need to knock it the fuck off. I get it. You’re angry and you feel powerless against the ATF. But taking out your rage on somebody you perceive to be weaker is childish. It’s as if your teacher gave you detention so you decided to beat the shit out of her kid.

Some of you may not be angry but are merely trying to win favor from the ATF. Turning on your fellows is a great to display loyalty to a master after all. But it’s not going to work. No matter how much you kowtow to the ATF, no matter how much you lick its boots, it will not grant you the special favors you seek. When the next fun toy gets developed it will still rip it from your hands. That’s because it views you, correctly, as its subject.

The ATF issued and will enforce the decision. It is solely responsible for this mess. So take all of that anger that you’re using to lash out at people who aren’t responsible for this mess and lash out at the ATF. Who knows, maybe if our ancestors had told the ATF to go fuck itself instead of screaming at each other we wouldn’t be in the mess. Maybe if the ATF knew everything it did would be met with resistance it would be more hesitant to issue stupid rulings. But we’ll probably never know because we’re too busy blaming each other to dedicate any real energy to hating the actual culprit.

ATF Rules Holding Firearms Incorrectly is a Felony

This just goes to show how meaningless the label felon is and how much power an agency can wield. Arm braces for AR pattern rifles have been a big seller. They’re designed to help you brace an AR pistol against your forearm. It just so happens that these designs can also secure the weapon against your shoulder like a traditional stock. Because of this many people have chosen to build AR pistols with arm braces instead of paying the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) $200 for a tax stamp that gives them the privilege of using a traditional stock on an AR with a barrel shorter than 16″.

The ATF has now ruled that using an arm brace to shoulder an AR with a barrel under 16″ is a felony [PDF]:

The pistol stabilizing brace was neither “designed” nor approved to be used as a shoulder stock, and therefore use as a shoulder stock constitutes a “redesign” of the device because a possessor has changed the very function of the item. Any individual letters stating otherwise are contrary to the plain language of the NFA, misapply Federal law, and are hereby revoked.

Any person who intends to use a handgun stabilizing brace as a shoulder stock on a pistol (having a rifled barrel under 16 inches in length or a smooth bore firearm with a barrel under 18 inches in length) must first file an ATF Form 1 and pay the applicable tax because the resulting firearm will be subject to all provisions of the NFA.

What this means is that having an AR with a barrel under 16″ equipped with an arm brace is perfectly legal so long as you don’t put the brace against your shoulder. The second you do put that brace against your shoulder you are committing a felony. Holding a gun wrong is now officially a felony.

And this new felony didn’t take an act of Congress or the signature of the President. It only required an agency to write a letter. This is why the idea that Congress must vote and the President must sign a bill is some kind of meaningful check against runaway government power is laughable. In the case of firearm laws the ATF need only redefine what “redesign” means and it can create a new felony crime. No fuss, no muss.

I think this also explains why the average working professional unknowingly commits and average of three felonies a day. When an agency can simply redefine a single word and create a new felony it goes without saying that there are going to be a lot of felonies. This is also why everybody who thinks they’re a law-abiding citizen is wrong.

Using Gun Buybacks for Agorism

Gun buybacks are one of the dumbest ideas that have ever popped into the heads of gun control advocates. These buybacks works off of the idea that state can steal money from the people then use a portion of that stolen money to buy some of the people’s guns. But they’re an easily exploitable. While the idea is to further increase the disparity of force between the state and its subjects, smart individuals can use these programs to recover some of the money stolen from them. Much to the chagrin of gun control advocates, gun owners are actively working to recover some of their wealth:

The self-described “gun rights activist,” who we are not naming, brought in a duffel bag full of home made, “slam-fire” shotguns (all of legal length). He was paid $50 for each of these improvised guns. This low ball price shows just how unrealistic it is for anyone but criminals to turn guns in to the police when they have these buy back programs.

While this was a low buy back, sometimes programs go as high as several hundred dollars. Activists have turned in a few dollars worth of pipes for what added up to thousands out of the police department’s pockets.

Agorists should take note of this. With a few dollars in parts from the hardware store you can net $50 or more from any police station holding a buyback. Not only does this extract wealth from the state but it specifically extracts it from one of the worst parts of the state, the police.

Tyrannical Russian Regime Becomes Slightly Less Tyrannical

It appears that the tyrannical Russian regime has become slightly less tyrannical by allowing serfs to use self-defense as a justification when begging their lords for permission to carry a firearm:

In an amendment to its tough gun control laws, the Russian government eases restrictions, allowing citizens to carry licensed weapons for the purposes of ‘self-defense.’

Until now Russian gun enthusiasts were only permitted to carry firearms for hunting or target shooting after obtaining a license through the Interior Ministry. Russian gun licenses are to be renewed every five years, and applicants face strict background checks and are required to take gun safety courses.

The addendum to the law now lists self-defense as a legally acceptable reason for carrying a weapon

But seriously, it’s awful nice of the Russian lords to give the serfs this little indulgence. What I will be interested in seeing is how may permits the Russian government will actually issue where self-defense is listed as the justification.

Colt on the Verge of Bankruptcy, Again

It appears, once again, Colt is on the verge of bankruptcy. Nobody appears to be shocked by this. Colt has a long history of making decisions that could be generously called questionable. In fact BusinessWeek has put together a nice summarized history of Colt. The article is focused mostly on Colt’s bad decisions because, frankly, there aren’t a lot of good decisions to look at. For me the dumbest decision the company made was all but abandoning the civilian market in favor of focusing on the military market after it had lost the contract to produce the sidearm and rifle for the United States military:

In the 1970s, Colt and other American gunmakers, following the bad example of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, grew smug and lazy. Like Japanese and German car companies, more nimble foreign gunmakers grabbed market share. By the 1980s, Smith & Wesson had lost the U.S. police to Austria’s Glock, while Colt saw Italy’s Beretta snatch its main U.S. Army sidearm contract. In 1985, Colt plant employees who belonged to the United Auto Workers launched a protracted strike for higher pay. Replacement employees weren’t up to the task, and “quality suffered badly,” says Feldman, then an organizer for the National Rifle Association. In 1988 the Pentagon gave Colt’s M16 contract to FN Herstal of Belgium. Four years later, Colt filed for bankruptcy court protection from its creditors. “With the end of the Cold War,” says Hopkins, the firearms marketer, “it seemed like the company might never recover.”

[…]

In 1999, Zilkha named a new CEO, William Keys, a retired three-star Marine Corps general. The company announced it would end production of all but a handful of civilian handguns and focus on military production. As a reporter at the Wall Street Journal during this period, I interviewed a memorably glum Zilkha. He complained that on top of his other problems, he felt unfairly targeted by gun rights activists who criticized his past contributions to Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer, a vocal proponent of stricter gun control. When I suggested to Zilkha that he seemed to regret ever having entered the gun business, he didn’t argue.

Admittedly Colt has backed away from the decision over time. Now if you want an authentic Colt firearm you can get one but it will cost you your first born child. I know a few people who still herald the Colt 1911 as the end all be all in 1911s but I could never figured out what Colt 1911s do that other 1911s manufactured by reputable manufacturers for less don’t. Maybe the stamped on mustang makes the slide move faster, I don’t know.

That’s the other thing. Releasing 1911s is fine and all but there are approximately eleventy bajillion 1911 manufacturers out there. Name alone is seldom enough to keep one relevant in a market for very long. Smart manufacturers try to provide some kind of innovation be in new models of firearms or firearms designed to service niche markets. As far as I can tell Colt does neither.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Colt name is bought up by a foreign manufacturer at a fire sale price. While the name alone isn’t enough to keep one in the market it certainly would offer quick credibility to a new manufacturer looking to enter the market (since a lot of people will mistake the new Colt for the old Colt just as many people mistake Springfield Armory, Inc. for the Springfield Armory of lore).

Gun Owners in Washington Planning Act of Mass Civil Disobedience

During the election i594 passed in Washington, which requires all gun transfers to be performed through a federally licensed dealer. As you can guess gun owners are pissed. After all, what parent wants to pay a middle man just so they can give their child his or her inheritance to them? Who wants to pay a middle man just to get permission to sell a firearm to a friend? It’s a stupid law, it’s unenforceable, and it appears that Washington’s gun owners are planning to give their rulers a rightfully deserved gigantic middle finger:

Tens of thousands of Connecticut gun owners chose to become overnight felons rather than comply with that state’s new gun registration law. The defiance spurred the Hartford Courant editorial board to impotently sputter about rounding up the scofflaws.

New York’s similar registration law suffers such low compliance that state officials won’t even reveal how many people have abide by the measure—a desperate secrecy ploy that the New York State Committee on Open Government says thumbs its nose at the law itself.

Now Washington state residents pissed of about i594, a ballot measure inflicting background check requirements on even private transactions, plan an exercise in mass disobedience next month.

According to the event’s Facebook page they plan to gather en masse at the Washington State Capital and exchange firearms without involving any middle men. Since only federally licensed dealers can access the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to perform a background check these transfers will be in violation of the law.

I’m a big fan of civil disobedience because it shows how impotent the state is. Assuming half of the 6,100 people (as of this writing) marked as going show up it will be impossible for law enforcement agents to arrest them all. Even if they did manage to round them all up they probably wouldn’t have enough cages to keep them in. The state’s power is predatory in nature. It attempts to isolate individuals and attack them. But when it faces masses of people it must either back down or use violence on all of them, which quickly erases its legitimacy in the eyes of many.

This even will, in all probability, also cause many gun control loons to reveal their true faces. I’m sure social media outlets will be jam packed with comments by anti-gunners who claim to want peace demanding the police execute these unruly gun owners. Nothing brings out an anti-gunner’s violence nature like disobedient gun owners. I look forward to reading their rants for the LULZ.