Category: Gun Rights

New Criminals Created in New York

New York has a slew of new criminals thanks to the passage of new draconian gun control legislation:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed the nation’s first new gun-control bill since last month’s massacre at a Connecticut school.

“I am proud to be a New Yorker because New York is doing something, because we are fighting back (against gun violence),” Cuomo told reporters shortly before signing the bill.

The law, among other things, requires background checks for would-be purchasers on all private sales, fortifies the state’s existing assault weapons ban, limits the number of bullets in magazines, and strengthen rules that keep the mentally ill from owning firearms.

By “fighting back” Cuomo means turning nonviolent gun owners into criminals that will not be the target of state aggression. There will likely be court battles over this legislation but in the mean time gun owners in that state will no longer be considered lawful. Here’s my question for gun owners living in New York, are you read to created some discord or will you continue to beg your state to return your previous freedoms? New York, considering the passage of these laws, would be the perfect place to begin implementing Plan B. There are now designs available for functional magazines that can be fabricated on 3D printers. If I were a denizen of New York I’d begin setting up shop and cranking out standard capacity magazines. Make the state’s prohibition meaningless by ensuring everybody has multiple standard capacity magazines. Civil disobedience is more likely to net your positive change then begging.Beyond that all I have left to say is good luck to those of you living in New York and if you need somebody to hold your contraband while the court battle is ongoing let me know (and no, this isn’t a cheap ploy to steal your stuff).

Laws Only Apply to Little People

The wonderful thing about living under a state is that there are two legal systems to choose from. If you are a serf you get one set of laws but if you are a ruler or allied with a ruler you get another set of laws. For example, if a police officer kidnaps somebody it’s called an arrest, if you kidnap somebody it’s considered a criminal act. David Gregory, the man who held a 30-round AR-15 magazines in Washington DC in front of a national audience, will not be prosecuted for violating Washington DC’s standard capacity magazine ban:

Looks like NBC’s David Gregory won’t have to turn to the life of a fugitive, after all. Despite waving around a 30-round magazine that’s illegal under District law on a Dec. 23 Meet the Press broadcast, Gregory won’t be prosecuted, D.C. attorney general Irv Nathan announced in a letter this afternoon.

Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast.

So Gregory gets away scot-free, despite having committed a crime. In the letter, Nathan describes not pressing charges as a “very close” decision.

David Gregory, being a proponent of gun control, is an ally of the state and therefore is granted special privileges by the state. People often claim, mistakenly, that the United States is a nation of laws. The United States isn’t a nation of laws, it is a nation where one set of individuals, those either composing or allying with the state, are allowed to disobey the very laws they are tasked with creating and enforcing while the remainder of the population, those who are not members or allies of the state, suffer brutal prosecution.

In the gun rights community a lot of emphasis is placed on lawful gun owners. I no longer put emphasis on the lawful criteria because what is or isn’t lawful in this country is arbitrary. Lawful is defined entirely by dictates of the state. What is lawful one day, say possessing standard capacity magazines, can be unlawful the next day with little more than a stroke of a pen. Under such circumstances being considered lawful means little more than being willing to submit to the state’s already numerous and every increases number of decrees. Why do people place value on a willingness to submit to such conditions?

Checkmate

So somebody went and designed a magazine that can be created using a 3D printer. Not only did they design such a magazine but they tested it and it worked very well. This demonstrates the futility of a magazine ban. Combining a box with a spring isn’t exactly rocket science, in fact boxes and springs have been used by humanity for centuries.

I still think the best defense against any firearm-related prohibition is to take a page from alcohol prohibition and the prohibition of some drugs. During the era of alcohol prohibition people were still able to get alcohol. From bootleggers to people making bathtub gin there was no way to enforce the prohibition. Even if you wanted to spend a night on the town you had options in the form of speakeasies, which were secret locations where individuals wanting to socialized over drinks could go. The current prohibition on some drugs has proven to be similarly futile. Those wanting to buy verboten drugs can generally do so easily. We must do the same with firearms. By making firearms and related accessories so prevalent we can render any prohibition irrelevant. The prevalent availability of cannabis has not only rendered the prohibition almost entirely meaningless but it has also allowed advocates of cannabis legalization to point to example after example of people using the plant to no ill effect. Advocates of gun rights have done a similar job with firearms. By making firearms so prevalent in society we’ve prevented many individuals from believing prominent gun ownership is dangerous to society. In the case of a prohibition we would have to step up production to ensure firearms become even more widely available.

Executive Orders are the New Hotness

What happens when you’re the president and Congress isn’t looking to play ball? You issue executive orders of course! In fact Biden’s committee on gun confiscation is rumored to recommend 19 executive actions to Obama:

The White House has identified 19 executive actions for President Barack Obama to move unilaterally on gun control, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of House Democrats on Monday, the administration’s first definitive statements about its response to last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Pretending that a system of checks and balances existed was getting kind of old anyways.

What is an “Assault Weapon”

I don’t know who created this concise guide to “assault weapons” but they made a great contribution to the fight for gun rights. The site is a slideshow that describes the origin on the term “assault weapon” and discusses that the term is nothing more than a legal fiction defined not by lethality or capability but by cosmetic features. It’s a pretty good link to send those who aren’t sure what an “assault weapon” is.

Burglary Tied to The Journal News’s Map of Gun Owners

The Journal News created a map of gun permit holders in the state of New York. While the news organization claimed that they did this because people have a right to know who the gun owners in their neighborhood are I believe the purpose behind publishing the maps was more nefarious. Most of us in the gun rights community warned that maps like this put gun owners at risk because it informed thieves where they could be reasonably assured guns could be stolen. Needless to say a burglar used the map to steal firearms:

Brewster, N.Y. – 1/13/2013 – Today Senator Greg Ball (Patterson – R, C, I) announced that a burglary has been reported on Davis Ave. in White Plains, New York that evidently ties into The Journal News gun maps. It is reported that the burglar used The Journal News’ interactive gun map to target a home included on the map. Luckily the gun was locked up and no one was hurt.

It was bound to happen and I think that was why the Journal News published the maps.

Gun Control Advocates Like to Contradict Themselves

I maintain a relatively positive outlook most of the time by finding the funny side of things. Because of this I can find the Star Tribune somewhat entertaining at times. If I were a more negative person the Star Tribune would be a constant source of anger. Both the articles written by the paper’s staff and the letter received from their readers are often headache inducing if you try to find any logic. Take the following letter sent to the Star Tribune:

In response to the Jan. 10 letter on gun violence that ended with “Never forget, the Constitution was created to protect us citizens from our government”: This libertarian myth is contrary to the full breadth of the document. According to constitutional scholar Garrett Epps (writing in the Nation, Feb. 7, 2011): “[The] document as a whole is much more concerned about what the government can do — not with what it can’t. From the beginning, it was empowered to levy taxes, to raise armies, to make war, to set the rules of commerce and to bind the nation through treaties and international agreements. … [It] was not written to weaken an overreaching Congress but to strengthen an enfeebled one.”

I actually agree with this paragraph. The Constitution was actually a federal power grab. Before it the federal government was ruled by the Articles of Confederation, which kept most power in the hands of the individual states. In fact the federal government was unable to collect taxes, instead relying on voluntary payments from the individual states, and didn’t have a Supreme Court, leaving it unable to make court rulings affecting people living in the individual states. This is why I’m not a fan of the Constitution, it centralized power and left the door open so the federal government could perpetually grab more power. Had the writer stopped there she may have been able to claim a point but she continued:

The Constitution continues to be a living, breathing document — the 27 Amendments are proof of this — and should not be considered a means to restrict our present laws based on an 18th-century, musket-toting populace.

LUANNE SPEETER, EDINA

She claims that the Constitution is a living document as attested by the 27 amendments that have been made to it. Notice that she specifically indicated the the document is living because of the amendment process, she didn’t claim that the Constitution was a living document because the interpretation of the statements found within can be change over time. She contradicted herself by saying the amendment process is how you make changes to the Constitution then claimed that the Constitution shouldn’t “be considered a means to restrict our present laws based on an 18th-century, musket-toting populace.” The second of those 27 mentioned amendments specifically protects the rights of gun owners from disarmament. On top of that the Supreme Court, which was granted the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution, ruled in Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment protected the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. You can’t claim that the amendment process is how you change the Constitution and then turn around and ignore one of those amendments.

Gun control advocates can’t help but get caught up in contradictions. Their entire philosophy is contradictory. They claim to oppose violence but demand the state use violence to disarm gun owners and they claim to oppose gun possession but demand that the state be allowed to keep guns.

White House Considering Stealing the NRA’s Proposal

It appears that a little irony is playing out in Joe Biden’s task force. The Obama Administration has announced that they will consider spending $50 million to put police officers in public schools:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is considering a $50 million plan to fund hundreds of police officers in public schools, a Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks.

The school safety initiative would make federal dollars available to schools that want to hire police officers and install surveillance equipment, although it is not nearly as far-ranging as the National Rifle Association’s proposal for armed guards in every U.S. school.

I’m sure the National Rifle Association (NRA) will receive no credit for the idea, which is rather ironic consider the NRA’s actions towards the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). But this decision by Biden’s task force doesn’t surprise me, in fact I would have been surprised if they hadn’t announced something like this. When the NRA announced its School Shield program and voiced my concerns over expanding the police state already rampant in public schools:

This concerns me as well. Securing schools as much as sports stadiums requires making schools even more like prisons than they already are. Many major stadiums have metal detectors, cameras everywhere, and guards performing pat downs on those entering the venue. Since stadiums are private institutions I don’t care how they run their operations. In his apparently desperate attempt to the Connecticut shooting on something LaPierre hasn’t considered the consequences of making schools more like prison. If he believes violent media causes violence in society then submitting children to prison style security is likely to make them more subservient to the state. As the state has a vested interest in disarm the populace it would seem counterproductive to the goal of protecting gun rights to instill even more obedience into today’s youth. Maintaining gun rights requires a populace that will stand up to the police state, not submit to it. Having children go through metal detectors, submit to searches of their persons and belongings, and being under the constant eye of Big Brother can only instill authoritarianism, which directly opposes the stated goals of the NRA.

Putting armed officers in schools makes sense from the state’s perspective as doing so will help instill more obedience at an impressionable age. We already have schools teaching children that the police are their friends and that one should always truth police officers, which isn’t true:

In reality the police are the state’s expropriators:

The true purpose of police officers is to act as direct state expropriators. Notice that a majority of offenses one can be punished for involve no victims. Speeding tickets, parking tickets, fines for possessing verboten drugs, etc. are victimless crimes that involve the payment of money from offenders to the state. Even the prison system is nothing more than a special form of subsidy in the form of slave labor. Federal prisoners are generally “employed” by Federal Prison Industries, more commonly known as UNICOR. UNICOR is a government owned corporation that produces goods and services for the federal government. All federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense, are legally required to source all needed goods and services through UNICOR unless UNICOR is unable to provide it or gives permission to the federal agencie to seek an alternate provider. Private prisons are another form of subsidy. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison industry in the country, uses prisoners to provide goods and services to at extremely cheap prices. The police, through enforcing jailable offenses, provide both UNICOR and private companies like CCA with a source of extremely cheap labor. Both corporations enjoy a benefit over other domestic providers of goods and services since neither is obligated to follow labor laws such as paying workers a minimum wage. Effectively wealth, in the form of labor, is being transfered from prisoners to entities like UNICOR and CCA. The state’s courts have also ruled that the police are not obligate to provide protection, further invalidating any claim that their primary purpose is the defense of individuals from domestic threats.

It’s pretty easy to see why Biden’s task force has decided the NRA’s plan was a swell idea. Of course Obama’s administration needs to sell the idea, which will take a little finesse. Gun control advocates have been decrying the NRA’s idea because it would put more guns into schools. If Obama and his gang want to sell the idea they’re going to have to change the message, which they’re trying to do by claiming their plan won’t be as extensive as the NRA’s. This claim is an attempt to make the NRA look like overzealous extremists. Making the NRA appear to be overzealous extremists is necessary to forward the agenda of gun control because admitting the organization had a valid idea would give some the organization some credit and that may cause people to consider more of their ideas.

If Obama pursues the federally funded armed guards route you can rest assured he will say the federal funds will only go to arms school that are “at risk.” That is to say the federal government would start putting armed officers in a few schools initially and expand from there. At some point every public school would likely have posted armed guards but by then everybody will have forgotten about the NRA’s initial proposal and the gun control community’s reaction to it.

One question remains, why would gun control advocates go along with such an idea? They’ve been railing on the NRA’s proposal since it was made. How could they support the same proposal by the federal government? Easy. Gun control advocates don’t oppose guns, they oppose non-state agents having guns. Remember that gun control advocates are authoritarians and desire to grant the state totalitarian control so it can “advance” society in the “right” direction.

This will end up being an interesting month as far as gun rights are concerned. I wonder what other ideas will be announced by Biden’s task force next week.

Who Watches the Watchmen

Gun control advocates claim that the general populace must be disarmed because they are too irresponsible to own firearms. Meanwhile those very same advocates want to let people like this maintain access to firearms:

A semi-automatic pistol found near the scene of a gun battle in Mexico where five people died, including a Mexican beauty queen, has been traced to a former federal gun agent in Minnesota who was part of the government’s controversial Fast and Furious border gun-tracking operation.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has confirmed that it is investigating allegations that an FN Herstal Five-seven handgun tracked from the area of a Nov. 23 shootout in Sinaloa was linked to George Gillett Jr., who oversaw Operation Fast and Furious from October 2009 to April 2010.

Gillett played a central role in a similar Twin Cities gun sting a decade ago that was shut down after several government-tracked guns were connected to violent gang crimes.

For the record I want it known that my firearms have never harmed anybody nor have I given or sold firearms to violent individuals. Meanwhile the United States government, the same government gun control advocates want to leave armed, has been traffic firearms to violent Mexican drug cartels for ages now. Gillett, the person who provided one of the firearms recovered from the above mentioned shootout, had previously helped arm gangs here in the Twin Cities.

Any claim of opposing violence made by gun control advocates should be summarily dismissed. Such claims are obviously lies since the people making them want to disarm nonviolent individuals while allowing violent individuals to remain armed.

An Interesting Idea

Thanks goes to commenter Matt for letting me know about a new bill introduced in Wyoming [PDF]:

AN ACT relating to firearms; providing that any federal law which attempts to ban a semi-automatic firearm or to limit the size of a magazine of a firearm or other limitation on firearms in this state shall be unenforceable in Wyoming; providing a penalty; and providing for an effective date.

I would like to see this bill pass just to know that there is one state in the Union that still has a spine. Since the Civil War the individuals states have been reluctant to stand up to the federal state. They have good cause since the last time they stood up they were invaded and hundreds of thousands of people ended up dead. Still, it would be nice to see a few monkey wrenches tossed into the federal state’s machinery.