Tag: Gun Rights

Turn Your Neighbor Over to the Stasi, Receive a Reward

According to information received by Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned the state of New York is encouraging denizens to turn in their firearm owning neighbors:

The state has established a toll-free tip line – 1-855-GUNSNYS (1-855- 486-7697) to encourage residents to report illegal firearm possession. The tip line also allows for information to be submitted via text – individuals can text GUNTIP and their message to CRIMES (274637). While the state will provide the administrative support and fund the rewards, the investigation and validity of the tip will be up to each local department.

[…]

If the information leads to an arrest for the illegal possession of a firearm, the “tipster” will be awarded $500. DCJS staff will handle all of the financial transactions.

In other words turn your neighbor over to the Stasi and you’ll receive a reward. This doesn’t surprise me as the state always attempts to recruit members of the general populace into its surveillance ranks. This is also an example of divide and conquer. The politicians in New York know that gun owners are likely to stick together and will also ignore the new firearm restrictions. In order to enforce the politician’s decrees the enforcers must segregate gun owners from the general population and the most effective means of doing that is to incentivize the general population to move against gun owners. It’s the same tactic the Nazis used (go ahead, try to incite Godwin’s Law, it doesn’t apply to accurate historical comparisons) to encourage individuals to turn in their neighbors that were hiding Jews.

History has many lessons to teach us but it seems few are willing to learn. When the state starts offering incentives to turn over neighbors you must realize they aren’t going to stop with just one group. Eventually they will be offering cash rewards that will encourage your neighbors to turn you in. In a police state, like the one we live in today, the golden rule is don’t talk to the police.

I will close with the following thought: hotlines only have a limited number of lines that can be open simultaneously. There are a lot of people in this world who have phones. If they all continuously called the hotline with bogus tips (or just report every police officer sighting, since they carry firearms that violate New York’s new restrictions) it would render the hotline entirely ineffective. Bonus points would probably have to be given to anybody who setup an auto-dialer to continuously call the hotline from multiple phone numbers.

Colorado Falls

I don’t think anybody was surprised to hear that John Hickenlooper signed the asinine Colorado gun control bill:

The governor of Colorado signed bills Wednesday that put sweeping new restrictions on sales of firearms and ammunition in a state with a pioneer tradition of gun ownership and self-reliance.

The bills thrust Colorado into the national spotlight as a potential test of how far the country might be willing to go with new gun restrictions after the horror of mass killings at an Aurora movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

The approval by Gov. John Hickenlooper came exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot at the theater, and the day after the executive director of the state Corrections Department was shot and killed at his home.

The bills require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

I’ve read several blogs urging Colorado gun owners to start tooling up for the 2014 election. Don’t worry, I’m not going to waste your time urging you to beg politicians next year to restore some of your liberties. I do want to see denizens of Colorado tooling up, just not for politics. Once again I’m going to bring up what I’m calling Plan B, the decentralized production of verboten firearms and accessories. But there is something those of us living outside of Colorado can do for those suffering under that state’s regime, get verboten products into their hands. Magpul has been trying their best to flood the Colorado market with standard capacity magazines but their operation doesn’t have to stop just because they’re leaving the state. Those of us living outside of Colorado can still put standard capacity magazines into the hands of Colorado gun owners and we should.

Yes, I’m urging gun owners to break the law. Just because some dude wearing a suit and sitting behind a fancy desk in a large marble building says something is a law doesn’t mean it’s just. When the state makes an unjust decree it is right to actively disobey it. If you’re living in Colorado don’t waste your time begging politicians for freedom, even if they grant it to you you’ll face the threat of future politicians taking it away. Instead render their power irrelevant, let them know you will not obey them, let them know that the people no longer view their decrees as legitimate. The only way you’ll gain freedom is if you take it.

Minnesota House to Drop Universal Background Checks

It appears that the gun control advocates in Minnesota are setting their sights lower and lower:

The House Democrat pushing for broader restrictions to Minnesota gun laws has abandoned imposing universal background checks for firearm sales.

Rep. Michael Paymar of St. Paul says he’s switching to a plan that would expand background checks to sales at gun shows but not to private sales and transfers.

I’m not sure how Paymar plans to expand background checks to gun shows but not private sales since the only sales that don’t require a background check at gun shows are private ones. Trying to find the logic in a politician’s statement is harder than finding unicorns. Why the sudden change of heart? It appears that the change in heart, at least in part, is due to the alternative gun control bill that was offered by gun rights activists:

Paymar says he also plans to include many provisions from the alternate package of less-restrictive gun measures that would tighten the state’s current background check system, add to the parameters of who cannot legally own a gun and help county attorneys crack down on illegal gun owners.

It just goes to show that gun control advocates are more than happy to compromise so long as that compromise involves more gun control. I don’t know why Minnesota gun owners are expected to suffer more gun control, especially since none of us were involve in the tragedy that sparked the recent gun control debate, but suffer we apparently will.

“Assault Weapon” Ban Won’t be Part of the Federal Gun Control Package

Dianne Feinstein, war profiteer extraordinaire, has had her agenda pushed back slightly. As it turns out Feinstein’s coveted “assault weapon” ban won’t be part of the gun control package offered for a vote on the Senate floor:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democratic gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month.

After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.

The ban is supported by more than a dozen Senate Democrats and the White House, as well as gun-control groups.

My money is on Feinstein offering her ban as an amendment. She’s very zealous in her pursuit of disarming all of the serfs she’s not making money on through her ties to the military industrial complex. It’ll be interesting to see if she becomes more unhinged as her political power further unravels.

3D Printed Firearm Technology Will Begin Advancing Quickly

I think we’re going to see a rapid advancement of 3D printed firearm technology now that Cody Wilson, the crypto-anarchist who is working to develop printable firearms while bypassing potential copyright laws, has a Type 7 Federal Firearms License (FFL):

On Saturday, Defense Distributed—America’s best-known group of 3D gunsmiths—announced on Facebook that its founder, Cody Wilson, now has a federal license to be a gun manufacturer and dealer. The group published a picture of the Type 7 federal firearms license (FFL) to prove it.

“The big thing it allows me to do is that it makes me manufacture under the law—everything that manufacturers are allowed to do,” he told Ars. “I can sell some of the pieces that we’ve been making. I can do firearms transactions and transport.”

Cody isn’t planning to stop with a simple manufacturing license though:

Currently, Wilson said he will not actually begin manufacturing and selling guns until he receives an “add-on” to his FFL, known as a Class 2 Special Occupational Taxpayer (SOT), as licensed under federal law (PDF). This would allow him to manufacture and deal a broader range of firearms under the National Firearms Act. The Class 2 SOT would grants Wilson the ability to manufacture, for example, a fully-automatic rifle. Wilson applied for the SOT on Saturday and expects to receive approval within a few weeks.

The primary advantage a manufacturing license has in regards to creating printable firearms is that it allows Cody to work on the project openly while legally seeking investors. In other words it keeps the state off of his back for a while. If Cody can build and test printable machine guns the technology of printable firearms in general is likely to advance leaps and bounds very quickly.

This Week in Gun Control

This has been a pretty busy week for gun control at both a federal and Minnesota level. On the federal level Feinstein’s legislation that would be black rifles and standard capacity magazines was approved by the Senate Committee:

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a measure to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, the first major Congressional vote on the issue since the ban expired in 2004.

The vote to approve the measure — now ostensibly headed for the full Senate — went firmly along party lines; the 10 Democrats on the committee voted aye, and the 8 Republicans of the committee rejected it. The legislation would also limit the size of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds.

Now the legislation will move to a floor vote, which could go either way. You can beg your masters for leniency by calling, e-mailing, and writing them but, frankly, I it’s past time for civil disobedience. Begging hasn’t gotten us very far and it doesn’t look like it will be any more effective in the future.

In Minnesota, surprising nobody, the local Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would ban private sales:

DFLers on a Senate committee gave a go-ahead to universal background checks for gun sales Thursday night.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a wide-ranging gun-violence bill on a 5-3 party-line vote, with DFLers supporting it and Republicans opposing it. It now goes to the Senate floor
It was the first recorded vote on a gun-violence bill of the Legislative session after weeks of discussion in the House and Senate.
The key issue — extending background checks to private sales — remains a political hot potato at the Capitol.

A companion bill is to be heard next week in the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, where its chances are in doubt.

Once again begging didn’t work out in our favor. While gun rights advocates flooded the hearings the Committee decided it had no reason to listen to the majority. There is a little good news, the alternative bill, which would put more information in government databases, create new criminals, and prohibit you from falsely reporting your “assault weapons” as lost in the event of a confiscation, hasn’t moved yet.

Things aren’t looking good from a political side (they never do) but for an agorist looking to make some major money a new business opportunity in the form of “assault weapon” and standard capacity magazine manufacturing appears could arise.

Another Article Claiming Gun Owners are Terrorists

Another day, another mainstream media report trying to label gun owners as terrorists:

There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat with the U.S. government. They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal.

They’re not jihadists. They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.

No, the greatest danger to the lives of American is the United States government. Considering the Attorney General stated that it’s legal to murder American citizens on United States soil with drones I don’t think there is any way to claim that those who oppose the state are a real danger. I do lover this excerpt:

Patriot groups are motivated by a host of anti-government attitudes, but their primary focus is guns. They are convinced that the government is out to seize their weapons, even though most legislation is focused on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals or restricting the types of weapons that can be sold.

I would say the “patriot” movement’s primary focus is to make the United States government abide by the Constitution, which is why I’m not part of the movement (I want to abolish the government entirely). What the Los Angeles Times is trying to do with that statement is isolate gun owners from the general populace, divide them from the large group so they can be easily conquered. The irony, of course, is that the Los Angeles Times is trying to make gun owners look dangerous while their city’s police department shoots up random trucks and burns a man down instead of following due process. Denizens of Los Angeles should be well aware of the fact that the state is far more dangerous than independent gun owners.

On the upside, at least they’re not blaming the anarchists this time.

Don’t Fall for the False Dichotomy

It’s inevitable that a person involved in the political realm will eventually be forced to make a decision between standing up for their principles or maintaining their political alliances. Gun owners who also oppose furthering the police state now have to make that decision. Between the two primary factions two options have emerged: HF237, which attempts to prohibit private sales, or HF1323, which will advance the police state.

Both sides in this debate have adopted an “us” versus “them” methodology. In face the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) has the following to say:

Some anti-gun activists have been working to create a split among gun owners, hoping to weaken our position by making us fight among ourselves. They are trying to portray the Criminal Control bill, HF1325, as a gun control bill.

As I mentioned in my coverage of HF1323 (HF1325 is a clone of HF1323 for those who are curious) the bill contains several points that I would qualify as gun control, specifically Section 12, which would make it a felony to falsely report your firearms as lost or stolen. I consider that section a method of gun control because in the event of an “assault weapon” ban it would prohibit you from reporting your “assault weapons” as lost. With the passage of HF1323 the police would have reason to kidnap you if you reported your firearms as lost during an attempted confiscation. This, in addition with the mess of data that the bill would mandate to be entered into state or federally managed databases, makes for a frightening proposition. Things get a bit more ridiculous when the GOCRA page presents only two two options:

Don’t let the gun grabbers divide and conquer us. Call and email your Minnesota senator and representative today:

  • Ask them to support Rep. Hilstrom and Sen. Ortman’s criminal control bill.
  • Ask them to oppose Rep. Paymar’ss [sic] bill.

That’s a false dichotomy because there is a third option, oppose both bills. There is no need to pass more legislation. What’s broken in regards to gun control isn’t the absence of restrictions, it’s the number of restrictions. Gun-free zones have greatly reduced the cost of performing violence. No amount of background checks, data in police databases, or new laws will correct that problem.

What surprises me isn’t GOCRA’s advocacy of HF1323, it’s their tenacity in supporting it. I haven’t seen any suggestion that people oppose both bills. In fact, based on what I’ve seen written on their website, they seem to imply that you’re either with gun owners by supporting HF1323 or you’re against them by opposing it. It’s a ridiculous attitude to hold and it saddens me to see it posted on their website.

As I said at the beginning of this post, eventually politics will lead you to make a decision between your principles or your political alliances. My principles won’t allow me to support any legislation that creates new gun control measures or grants more power to the police state. Fortunately I’ve escaped the political realm and am now working on solutions outside of the state’s ability to control. My solution relies on mutual cooperation instead of “us” versus “them” strategies. It’s also something different, which is desperately needed since the political means has lead to a continuous erosion of gun rights. I urge everybody to oppose both bills being presented and find alternative means of advancing gun rights. The time of passively begging politicians to give us a few scraps from the table is over. We don’t need their blessing, permission, or acknowledgement and it’s time we started realizing that.

3D Printer Firearm Manufacture Moves to Bypass Censorship and Copyright of CAD Models

Last month DEFCAD was launched to host firearm related 3D printer models after Thingverse implemented site-wide censorship. Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, is working on a new endeavor, a commercial version of DefCAD aimed at the free distribution of 3D models and bypassing copyright laws:

Wilson said DefCAD will become a for-profit corporation that will act as a one-stop search engine for “3D printable models” of just about anything. In other words, DefCAD hopes to be an expanded version of the physibles section on the Pirate Bay.

“It maintains all the present features but we step it up a notch,” Wilson told Ars. “The Pirate Bay has the right idea with physibles, but increasingly the fight is going to be about physical copyright—we want to build one of the tools early.”

And like the Pirate Bay, which has thumbed its nose at corporations, copyright, and the legal system for digital goods, Wilson suggests DefCAD would do the same for physical objects as much as possible.

[…]

“Help us turn DefCAD into the world’s first unblockable, open-source search engine for 3D printable parts,” Wilson narrates in the video. “There will be no takedowns. Ever.”

[…]

Wilson acknowledged that like the Pirate Bay, there are “contingency plans” to incorporate or move his operations to other countries not as affected by the DMCA. He specifically mentioned Slovakia, Russia and Singapore as “places we could go.”

The commercial DefCAD site is up and looking for crowd sourced funding. While I admit that this venture may not turn out and there is always the chance that this endeavor is a scam I believe Cody had demonstrated his sincerity by setting up DefCAD.org and developing a 3D printable AR-15 lower. Due to those facts alone dropped them $50.00 because I believe in the cause. I, like Code, am a crypto-anarchist and believe a world where voluntary interactions, not coercive interactions, are the norm:

So what’s Wilson’s endgame? He describes himself as a “crypto-anarchist” who follows the teachings of 19th-century French anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

“I believe in revolution—not the capital-R ‘Revolution,’ but I’m all for the next thing,” Wilson said. “No one can imagine the end of neo-liberal democracy. I don’t believe in socialism from above, but socialism from below. It doesn’t matter what it is, the point is that it’s not imposed. It will be what it needs to look like. [Society will be] based not on coercion but cooperation—I’m a desperate romantic. If any of these things are possible, I don’t want to believe in anything else. I want to see if these are real and can work.”

His viewpoint isn’t that dissimilar from my own:

The revolution won’t be violent, it won’t involve fighting in the streets, it won’t involved people rising up and overthrowing the governments of the world. What the revolution will involve is the continuous decentralization of power. Technology will continue to evolve in a manner that empowers individuals to separate themselves from their rulers. Powerful corporations who have enjoyed protection from competition through the state’s decrees will lose their power as an ever growing number of people are able to replicate their goods from the safety of their own homes. Enforcing patents and regulations will become impossible. As people begin to fabricate needed goods themselves the large corporations and the state will bring in less wealth. People will no longer be forced to buy goods from politically connected corporations or pay sales tax to the state.

3D printers stand to be one of the greatest tools ever devise for stripping power from the handful of centralized entities that currently hold it. The state’s laws become more and more irrelevant as people become less and less reliant on it and its cronies. Gun control laws would be meaningless in a world where any individual can easily fabricate whatever firearm they want. Wealth raked in through sales tax would dwindle as individuals are able to make needed goods themselves. Couple 3D printer technology with anonymizing tools such as Tor and you have a world where information cannot be censored, tied to any specific individuals, and goods can be shipped from designers to customers free of the state’s watchful eye.

We will not achieve liberty, in the firearms community or in general, through political involvement. Begging those in power to cede their power is a foolhardy strategy that is doom from the start. When you involve yourself in politics you involve yourself in a system that was designed and can be redesigned at any time by those currently in power. Playing outside of the political system allows you to play by your own set or rules. Instead of begging those in power for liberty you can develop ways to entirely bypass their tyranny. If you want to ensure the state cannot ban firearms, magazines, or other related accessories it would behoove you to do whatever is in your power to ensure 3D printer technology advances.

Gun Control Advocates Dislike Turnabout

Joan Peterson is a gun control advocate who lives in the same state as I’m currently occupying, Minnesota. Her zealotry is notable and I believe she would love nothing more than to see a law passed that granted the state a monopoly on legal firearm ownership. Her latest blog post demonstrates an interesting characteristic of gun control advocates, they dislike turnabout:

Isn’t it interesting that the gun rights extremists are more than willing to give up some of their rights to privacy and government interference when it suits their own purposes? Surely requiring everyone in a community to own a gun fits this description.

[…]

At least convicted felons would be exempt. That’s a relief. What about dangerously mentally ill people or domestic abusers? What about those convicted of drug crimes? What about minors? Where do you draw the line? How will you know who is legal and who is not if this is a requirement? Will “jack booted government thugs” go door to door to make sure those in the home are actually legal gun purchasers? Will you invade their privacy? How will you enforce this law? I mean, shouldn’t we make sure we enforce the gun laws we already have? What will happen if you refuse to have a gun? Will you be charged with a crime and sent to jail? Will you be fined? Remember now, these are the very same people who object to any paperwork requirements when a gun is purchased because it might lead to some sort of government record of gun ownership. How does this objection square with that point of view? Because of the stupid idea that a measure like this will keep the government from passing reasonable gun laws to keep us all safer in our communities, the NRA extremists are violating their own talking points. Hypocrisy as far as the eye can see…..

Notice how every question she asks is also a valid question when discussing gun control. How can a law against mentally ill individuals owning firearms be enforced when many mental illnesses can’t be detected until their symptoms begin to manifest? Why should a person convicted of growing, selling, or using cannabis be prohibited from owning firearms? None of those acts are violent in of themselves.

Obviously I oppose laws that require people to own a firearm just as I oppose laws that prohibit people from owning firearms. With that said proposed laws requiring people to own firearms is turnabout. It’s using the tactic beloved by gun control advocates, enforcing their personal desires onto a entire population by using the state’s capacity for violence, against them. Demanding everybody in a community own firearms is no different than prohibiting everybody in a community from owning firearms. Regardless of what is being demanded by the state the consequences of violating the demand are the same, men wearing costumes and carrying guns will kidnap you and lock you in a cage. That’s the difference between myself and gun control advocates, I have no desire to send armed thugs to kidnap you if you do something I disagree with. In fact I’ve not heard a single advocate of gun control explain how using the state’s capacity for violence to fight violence makes sense. If the desired end is to abolish violence then violence cannot be the means as it is mutually exclusive to the end.

Consider the following paragraph taken from her blog post:

As we all know, most reasonable gun owners, and even NRA members, want reasonable gun laws. I have written about that many many times before on this blog. NRA lobbyists don’t like new gun laws, right? That’s what they claim. But, wait- they love the gun laws that they, themselves, write and push on the public.This is ludicrous, stupid and dangerous. Where is common sense? A gun in the home is more likely to be used against you or someone in the home than to be used for self defense. Sure, guns are occasionally used for self defense in a home invasion or attack of some kind. But more often a gun is used in a suicide, homicide or accidental shooting.

Here statement that “A gun in the home is more likely to be used against you or someone in the home than to be used for self defense.” is a ridiculous one. But Joan asks a pertinent question, “Where is the common sense?” How can one oppose gun violence and advocate for laws that require men with gun to kidnap or murder people who violate those laws? Gun control advocates always seem to miss the fact that gun control laws are enforced by men with guns. Even worse, those men with guns are less accountable because people view their actions as being legitimate by default. If a police officer shoots somebody many people will believe the shooting was legitimate unless an investigation, which may or may not occur, says otherwise. On the other hand if I were to shoot somebody many people will believe the shooting was illegitimate unless an investigation, which will almost certainly occur, says otherwise. If gun control advocates want to grant a monopoly on gun ownership to somebody wouldn’t it make more sense if the monopolist was usually held accountable? Why do gun control advocates generally believe that the common sense solution is to give the monopoly to individuals that are held less accountable for their actions? She closes with the common gun control advocate tripe of having a discussion:

Let’s have some real discussion about whether guns in the home are a good idea or not. Let’s talk about whether using a gun for self defense actually is necessary or actually works.

Let’s have some real discussion about whether granting the state a monopoly on violence is a good idea or not. Let’s talk about whether having a state, an entity with a monopoly on violence, actually is necessary. It’s hypocritical to claim an opposition to violence while advocating solutions that rely on violence. Is having a gun in the home a good idea? That’s subjective. For some people it is, for others it’s not. Is a gun necessary for self-defense? Once again, that’s subjective. Each person has unique knowledge regarding themselves that is derived from their monopoly on life experiences. I cannot know what is best for you because I lack your unique knowledge about yourself and you cannot know what is best for me for the same reason. Therefore it’s egotistical, to say the least, to believe you know what is best for everybody else.

I should point out that Joan made a mistake in her post. She omitted the asterisk after saying:

People are free to own guns if they want to.

The asterisk should say “So long as those people are people I personally approve of, only own firearms that I personally approve of, and can have their firearms revoked the second I no longer personally approve of them.” Joan doesn’t believe people are free to own firearms, she believes select people, those she personally approves of, are allowed to have a temporary privilege to own certain firearms.

I will close with a thought. As a gun control advocate Joan appears to believe that gun owners are, at least on some level, inherently violent and therefore warrant more scrutiny in our society. As an anarchist I believe that statists are, at least on some level, either violent or ignorant of how the state works. I don’t believe Joan is ignorant of how the state works. She seems to have a very strong desire to control other people and she sees the state as her tool for doing so. In all likelihood her desire to control other people derives from fear of other people and that fear is likely cause by projecting characteristics of herself, namely her desire to control other people, onto everybody else. It appears that she’s caught in a vicious cycle of having a desire to control other people leading to a fear or other people leading to a desire to control other people and so on.