Gun Rights – Page 24 – A Geek With Guns

Why We Win Part 1,756

There are probably thousands of reasons why we gun rights activists have been winning. A lot of those reasons revolve around our tactics. Gun control activists spend most of their time fear mongering, screaming, and threatening acts of violence against gun rights activists. This has no effect on those of us that support gun rights but really rubs the people on the fence the wrong way.

Another reason we win is because gun control advocates harass businesses in the hopes of getting them to ban guns on their properties. Few businesses bow to their demands because gun control advocates aren’t very good at throwing money at businesses when they do. On the other hand when a business makes it clear that it supposed the rights of gun owners we shower them in money by frequenting their establishment:

MARYVILLE (WATE) – Shiloh Brew and Chew restaurant in Maryville is getting national attention after the owner put up signs welcoming guns.

Owner Sharma Floyd says she can barely keep up with all of the new business she’s getting.

“I’ve now been overwhelmed. I’ve now run out of food twice,” Floyd said.

The restaurant has been staying open late, and Floyd says she’s hiring seven more people this week alone.

“I can honestly say it is the absolute best thing I have done since I’ve been at Shiloh. It’s been incredible for my business.”

Before putting the signs up, business was struggling.

Us gun owners support those who support us. This is a stark contrast to gun control advocates who seem to either disappear after their demands are met or are so few in number that they can’t actually cause a noticeable uptick in sales. Either way a business has much to gain by supporting gun rights or remaining neutral while it has nothing to gain by banning guns from its properties.

A tip of the (not a fedora) hat goes to Guns Save Lives for highlighting this story.

Marketing Guns to Children Canard

There are two ways to drum up strong political support for your cause: tie to to fighting terrorism or saving the children. Gun control advocates sometimes dabble in the former but their bread and butter is the latter. With their recent slew of defeats the gun control bunch have decided to play its hand at “saving the children” again but pushing legislation that would prohibit anybody from “marketing firearms to children”:

(a) Conduct Prohibited.–Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall promulgate rules in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code, to prohibit any person from marketing firearms to children. Such rules shall include the following:

(1) A prohibition on the use of cartoon characters to promote firearms and firearm products.

(2) A prohibition on firearm brand name merchandise marketed for children (such as hats, t-shirts, and stuffed animals).

(3) A prohibition on the use of firearm marketing campaigns with the specific intent to appeal to children.

(4) A prohibition on the manufacturing of a gun with colors or designs that are specifically designed with the purpose to appeal to children.

(5) A prohibition on the manufacturing of a gun intended for use by children that does not clearly and conspicuously note the risk posed by the firearm by labeling somewhere visible on the firearm any of the following:

(A) “Real gun, not a toy.”.

(B) “Actual firearm the use of which may result in death or serious bodily injury.”.

(C) “Dangerous weapon”.

(D) Other similar language determined by the Federal Trade Commission.

I think Tam summed it up best:

Look, if you think that the firearms industry is actually spending advertising dollars to market its products to a demographic that is going to save enough quarters from their allowance to buy a Glock, toddle into the gun shop, reach up on tiptoe and slide their piggy bank across the counter, only to be told “Sorry, kid, you gotta be 21 to buy that“…

This is just another piece of meaningless legislation. Its only purpose is to make up a currently nonexistent problem and then claim to fix it. Gun control advocates are pushing it because it gives them grounds for demonizing gun owners by pointing to the make believe problem of gun manufacturers marketing to children and then claiming that gun owners directly fund it.

It’s really just another variation of “having a gun control conversation”. When a gun control advocate says they want to “have a conversation” what they really mean is that they want a gun owner to say something that can be taken out of context and used to demonize gun owners everywhere. If a conversation doesn’t give the gun control advocates their desired sound bite they just claim that the gun owners refused to “have a conversation”, which is an insinuation that the gun owner isn’t a reasonable person and is entirely unwilling to discuss methods of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

As despots through out have learned, if you can’t win with facts you try to demonize your opposition.

New Executive Order Places Sanctions On All Kalashnikov Concern Products

I’m sure you’ve already heard the news but in case some of you haven’t a new executive order was issued that effects gun owners. Obama, as part of his pissing match with Putin, has placed further sanctions on Russia included all Kalashnikov Concern products:

374. If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions? Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market?

If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction. New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014. If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]

There goes Saiga rifles and shotguns as well as Vepr rifles. This prohibition isn’t retroactive, most likely because enforcing such a thing would be impossible, so if you already own a Saiga shotgun or rifle you can keep it (unlike your health insurance). But importing new ones is strictly verboten so supplies will go down and prices will go up.

All of this because our government feels as though it absolutely must get into another conflict with Russia.

Minnesota Gun Rights Continues to Look Like a Scam

Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) is a local affiliate organization of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). If you’re never heard of NAGR, and I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t, it’s an organization that labels itself as a “no compromise” gun rights advocacy group. In reality it is an organization that appears to exist solely to separate gullible gun owners from their money. Likewise, I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve never heard of MGR. It’s a fairly new organization in Minnesota that mirrors its national affiliate organization in providing gun owners no tangible benefit whatsoever but constantly begging them for money.

One may wonder how I came to my conclusion regarding MGR. It’s simple really, I hang out with a lot of the people it targets. By calling itself a “no compromise” gun rights organization it targets people who believe the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) has compromised too often in the battle for gun rights. Many of these people are members of the local liberty-lite (my name for people who call themselves liberty advocates but continue believing that there should be a government) and liberty (anarchists) movements. Whenever one of these people posts about their dissatisfaction with GOCRA somebody jumps in to promote MGR. On July 4^th one of my friends posted about his dissatisfaction with GOCRA. Within hours a person who I know to be one of the kingpins in MGR swooped in (please note that I have anonymized all comments except my own because it may be possible to determine the identity of my friend by using me and the commenters as connections):

This is always the tag line they use. If I didn’t know otherwise I would believe this commenter to be an automated bot written by some stooge at MGR. Either way I don’t take scammers targeting my friends lightly so I decided to jump into the fray:

My attempt at both trolling MGR and preventing a friend from giving money to a, as far as I know, scam organization elicited a response from a second MGR shill:

In all honesty this is the most information I’ve ever gotten out of an MGR shill. Apparently the only way you can find out what the organization does is by attending its super secret (since they’re not posted anywhere on MGR’s website) weekend classes (which MGR probably charges for). The last time I heard about an organization that required people to attend super secret meetings just to find out what it does there were tests for thetan levels involved.

Since antagonization seemed to be working (at least better than any other tactic I’ve used to get information out of MGR shills) I decided to try some more:

I guess he must have been in contact with the mothership because after divulging information about MGR’s super secret weekend meetings (which, I’m now convinced, may actually involve thetan level testing) he resorted to the usual MGR shill tactic when pressed for information: deflection:

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is where I decided to go for the jugular. Now that I know MGR hosts biannual super secret weekend meetings that supposedly explain what the organization does I decided to ask why that information wasn’t posted on its website. After all, you would think any organization that held regular events would have a schedule posted on its website letting people know when and where they are:

I even performed a courtesy check of MGR’s website just in case some evidence of its super secret weekend meetings was posted since the start of the conversation (after all, it’s possible that nobody from MGR had thought to post information about its meetings to its website). Nothing was. Instead the shill simply said he would keep me in mind the next time one of these super secret weekend meetings occurred:

How he planned to inform me of the next meeting when he doesn’t know me and we’re not friends on Facebook is beyond me. He didn’t send a friend request or anything. But I digress. If MGR has actually held any of these super secret weekend meetings in the past I would think some information about them would have been posted on its website (you know, so its shills could point to said information when somebody like me accuses it of not doing anything):

What followed was a misunderstanding on my behalf:

I believe my misunderstanding was honest. After all, if somebody said evidence that your organization has done something is entirely absent from your website and you said “Actually there is.” you should assume that that person will assume that you are referring to evidence existing on your website. But that wasn’t the case here:

MGR must have been founded by the most operator of operators that has ever operated in areas of operations because it practices some extraordinary operational security. Its super secret weekend classes are, in fact, super secret. If you want to learn what the organization does you will have to wait for it to contact you, probably through a ninja courier, so you can get a personal invitation with the time and location of the next meeting. And you will probably have to memorize the information on your invitation because it will almost certain self-destruct five seconds after you receive it.

This, above everything else I have learned about the organization, reinforces my belief that the organization is a scam. It will gladly swoop in on vulnerable gun owners and ask them to give it money by whispering “no compromise” into their ears. But if its targets actually want to know what the organization does before giving it money that’s just tough shit. And, yes, I did let the shill know this:

It was obvious that I wasn’t going to get further information out of him so I gave up. However I do want to take a moment to point something out here. Political and business tactics are often kept secret. But if I want to know what a politician is claiming to fight for or what a business is selling I need only ask. Both are more than happy to provide me with such information. Likewise if I want to know what a politician or business has done I need only ask. Again both are more than happy to provide me with such information. They both know that you need to entice people. If you’re a politician you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re fighting for. If you’re a business you get people’s attention by telling them what you’re selling. Providing a track record of past successes helps assure people that you’re not just trying to scam them.

No politician or business, upon being asked what it has done, is going to tell you to attend a super secret weekend meeting at an undisclosed location and time.

My recommendation is to avoid MGR. I can’t find any evidence that indicates it is anything other than a sad attempt to separate Minnesota gun owners from their money. Red flags should go up when nobody involved with an organization is willing to tell you what, exactly, the organization has done. Even if you have misgivings about GOCRA its members are more than happy to provide you with a list of things it has done, and proof that verifies that list, so you can make an informed decision. MGR’s members are unwilling to even do that.

Target to Customers: Hey Guys Can You Leave Us Out of This

So after being dragged kicking and screaming into the firearm debate, first by Open Carry Texas and then by Moms Demand Something or Other, Target has released an official statement regarding customers carrying guns at its stores:

As you’ve likely seen in the media, there has been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit “open carry” should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.

Emphasis mine. While the boys and girls over in Bloomberg’s camp are busy jerking themselves off because they believe that they achieved their goal of getting Target to ban guns (reading comprehension has never been their strong suit) the truth is nothing has changed. Target basically said “Listen, both of you, we don’t want to get dragged into this shit. We just want to sell you stuff so you give us money. How about it? Can we just do business?”

I know a lot of gun rights activists are concerned that Moms Demand Something or Other will one day get a business to actually ban guns but I’m becoming less and less concerned. Each time Shannon Watts and her very small posse gets riled up and starts targeting a business they always get the same response: a statement from the business saying that nothing has changed and they really don’t want to be dragged into this debate. And that’s likely the only response they’ll ever receive because it gets Shannon and her friends to shut up and issuing an actual ban would be bad for business.

As a person whose only interest in Target is doing business I appreciate its desire to also only do business.

Why Advocating for Gun Control in Gun Publications Carriers Consequences

The Atlantic has an article titled Why We Can’t Talk About Gun Control. In it the termination of Dick Metcalf from Guns and Ammo is discussed as an excuse for why this nation, supposedly, can’t have a discussion about gun control (you know, except for all of the discussions about gun control that happen every damn day):

In the column, Metcalf wrote that he did not believe it was an infringement of the Second Amendment to require some training before a person can have a concealed carry. He added that states can have a universal background check law without him feeling infringed upon.

That did not go over well.

The column appeared in the December 2013 issue of Guns & Ammo, but subscribers started getting it in late October. Within three days, Metcalf said, as responses poured in—by mail, in forums, and on social media—from what he called the pointed end of the bell curve, people who “think the constitution is the only law we need,” Metcalf was labeled a “gun control collaborator” and “modern-day Benedict Arnold.”

“What struck me most about what happened to me was that this huge media corporation [Intermedia, the owner of Guns & Ammo] was absolutely unprepared for the onslaught of social-media negativity,” Metcalf said, “when we went over that line and dared ask the question, whether people might think about whether or not regulation is by definition infringement.”

The tone of the article insinuates that us gun owners are such extreme nut cases that we tirelessly censor any attempt in the media to discuss gun control. Let me explain this from a different angle, namely from the angle of a gun owner and gun rights activist. As a gun owner I am the demographic that Guns and Ammo targets. It makes money by selling magazines primarily to its target demographic. When your target demographic involves gun owners and gun rights activists publishing articles that basically raise a gigantic middle finger to them is bad for business. Not surprisingly when Metcalf went on his little rant about supporting mandator background checks for all firearm transfers, a legalese way of making something as simple as gifting one of your firearms to your own fucking child a crime unless you also paid $20 to a federally licensed dealer to do nothing more than make a phone call to a federal agency, it irked Guns and Ammo’s target demographic. Why would gun owners and gun rights activists want to pay money to be told that they are potentially dangerous people who should not be allowed to possess a firearm unless some faceless bureaucrat working for one of the most violent governments currently in existence says so?

But here’s the thing, Metcalf hasn’t been silenced by us evil gun owners. His employment with Guns and Ammo was terminated but he’s still free to write for another publication. In fact there are many publications, including The Atlantic itself, that are more than happy to pay writers money to toe the gun control advocates’ line. Hell Michael Bloomberg would probably pay big money for a writer who was bullied by us big mean gun owners.

So The Atlantic’s assertion that there can’t be a conversation about gun control is flat out bullshit. It’s true that many of us who own guns aren’t willing to pay money to have gun control preached at us but we’re not stopping anybody from preaching. I’m also not willing to pay writers to call me a misogynist. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have a conversation about whether or not I’m misogyny for liking an author’s works, it simply means that I won’t fund the damn conversation.

The Statists Over at Salon Confuse Me

I have to say that the statists over at Salon really confuse me. Via Gun Free Zone I had the opportunity to read this attempt at fear mongering by Salon. The author tries to argue that gun owners are terrorizing the nation but his opening paragraph presents a different story:

Here is a truth so fundamental that it should be self-evident: When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger. And yet that is exactly what happened at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch this spring: An alleged criminal defeated the cops, because the forces of lawlessness came at them with guns — then Bureau of Land Management officials further surrendered by removing the government markings from their vehicles to prevent violence against them.

I’m not a big fan of Cliven Bundy. The guy comes off as a self-righteous asshole to me. But to claim he did anything wrong by trying to defend land against a marauding gang is pretty stupid. What the author claims to be a “legitimately constituted state authority”, a phrase that in of itself is oxymoronic, is nothing more than a gang of thugs roaming around claiming everything within an imaginary set of lines on a map as its own.

The author is trying to making the argument that Bundy, by managing to make the state reconsider its usual brutish tactics, terrorized America. But the “legitimately constituted state authority” has been terrorizing America, and the rest of the world, for over 250 years. George Washington himself marched an armed force against a handful of whiskey producers because they failed to pay Washington’s gang protection money. Today the tradition continues. If you do something the state doesn’t like it sends armed thugs after you in an attempt to intimidate you. Growing a little cannabis? You may find your home being raided by armed thugs at two in the morning who start by burning your child with a flashbang (an article in Salon about real terrorism) and shooting your dog. Exceeding the arbitrarily posted maximum speed? Expect a road pirate to pull you over, walk up to your car, and demand you pay his gang protection money or face potential kidnapping and imprisonment. And God help you if you’re homeless because the state is going to make your life even more of a living hell.

This is the problem with statists. They claim that the gang they support is legitimate. Anybody who crosses their preferred gang is terrorizing “the people”. It’s one of the most idiotic arguments that has ever been muttered because “the people” are being terrorized by the statist’s preferred gang.

Bypassing Canadian Gun Control Laws

Gun control is such an interesting thing to debate. This is because advocating for gun control is pointless. Laws, being human constructs, will always be ignored, bypasses, and worked around. Take Canada’s gun control laws. While they’re not as draconian as many other nations’ gun laws they are still pretty strict. Fortunately some innovative people have come up with a novel way to get verboten guns into the country, attach them to automobiles going across the Canadian border:

The gun smugglers called him “fool” – one of many Windsorites they used to unwittingly mule firearms over the border.

Buried in volumes of recently released Toronto police documents is the frightening revelation that Windsor gun runners hide firearms and GPS devices in the cars of unsuspecting Canadians to sneak them through customs.

[…]

Police say Porter and the people who worked with him scouted out cars with Ontario licence plates in Michigan parking lots. Once they found suitable vehicles, police said, they would hide guns and GPS devices under the bumpers. Chrysler Pacificas, Dakotas and Jeeps were among the cars they looked for.

Sometimes they would follow the car, watching as it crossed the border. Other times, they would let the GPS lead them to the person’s home.

Speaking from a smuggler’s point of view, this method is pretty low risk. If the guns are discovered your hands remain clean. You may lose the gun but so long as you get enough across to meet your needs you’re victorious. Speaking from an unsuspecting mule’s point of view, this sucks because you’re at risk of being prosecuted under Canada’s bullshit object restriction laws.

But this demonstrates, yet again, why attempting to control objects is a foolish. So long as those verboten objects are in demand some entrepreneur will find a way to fulfill that demand.

Anti-Gun Activists a Such Friendly People

I think my favorite thing about being a gun rights advocate is how friendly, lovable, and peaceful our opponents are. Even though we disagree on the issue of guns we can still debate things in a civil manner and not stoop to death threats. Take Mike Malloy. You may not have heard of him. He’s a nobody with a talk show that has less listeners then my blog has readers. But he’s one classy dude:

I guess what I’ll do if I’m ever in that situation and I see one of these half-witted yahoos walking in with a weapon, high-caliber rifle like that, I’ll just put on a berserk act.I will just start screaming Gun! Gun! Gun! Watch out, everybody hit the deck! Guns! Guns! Everybody! And then dial 911 and I will say, shots fired, which will bring every god-damned cop within 15 miles. And then the half-wits with the long guns are going to panic and they’re going to run out of the store and if that rifle isn’t shouldered properly, the cop is going to take a look at that and put a bullet right in their forehead.

See how wonderful he is? He’s not trying to start a bloodbath or get the police to murder people who disagree with him. Nope. He wants a peaceful world free of guns. Well at least free of guns not being used to murder people he disagrees with. But beyond that he’s one classy dude. And there are many gun control advocates just like him, which is why the gun discussion may be heated at times but it never stoops to threats of violence.

War Criminal Calls Gun Rights Activists Terrorists, Irony So Thick You Can Cut It

The one thing I do enjoy about the upcoming presidential race is Hillary Clinton. She’s like a perpetual irony machine. Every time she opens her mouth to criticize somebody she dislikes she ends up saying something hypocritical. One group of people she really hates is us gun owners. So she takes every opportunity afforded to her to insult us. Most recently she called us a bunch of terrorists:

During a CNN “town hall” yesterday, Hillary Clinton said she was disappointed that Congress did not pass new gun control legislation following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December 2012. “I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation,” said the former secretary of state and presumptive presidential candidate. “We cannot let a minority of people—and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people—hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

I wonder what minority holds more terroristic viewpoints. Gun owners who tend to be very peaceful or officials in the United States government who bomb foreign countries seemingly at random and then laugh about it (seriously, Hillary, that quote is the gift that keeps on giving)? Considering that I’ve never threatened anybody with violence nor wielded violence against another it’s pretty hard to say I’m terrorizing anybody. Hillary, on the other hand, was the head of the State Department for the government that, under the current administration, dropped bombs on civilians in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia (and probably a few other countries that I’ve forgotten about).

I’d say if any minority holds terroristic viewpoints it’s her and her cronies.