Tag: Gun Rights

Upgrading Your Order for Free

What do you call somebody who ordered a $400 television and received a $2,000 rifle? A very lucky man:

Seth Horvitz tells DCist that he had purchased a flat-screen HDTV for he and his wife from one of Amazon’s affiliated sellers. What arrived was a decidedly non-TV shaped box containing a Sig Sauer SIG716, a $2,000 rifle manufactured by Swiss Arms AG.

Semi-automatic firearms like the SIG716 are actually illegal in Washington, D.C. and even transporting them through the state is a serious crime. Horvitz called the cops upon discovering the box’s content, which was smart since keeping it in his home — or transporting it in his car — could have landed him in serious trouble otherwise. Attempting to return it could also have been very, very bad.

Considering the laws in Washington DC I think I would have kept my mouth shut. As the story points out transporting the firearm is illegal so one can’t bring it to the intended recipient, the intended recipient can’t collect it, and it can’t be taken to the police. On top of that mere possession of the rifle is illegal in the city. Basically Mr. Horvitz was in a catch-22 and his best option would have been to shut up, hide the rifle or smuggle it out of Washington DC, and if anybody came looking for the missing rifle to claim he never received any package (while possibly noting that he still hasn’t received the television he ordered, implying concern about packages being stolen).

This is another example of why gun control is absurd. The simple act of receiving a package accidentally runs the risk of landing one in very hot water with the local authorities. Fortunately the Washington DC police haven’t decided to prosecute Mr. Horvitz for being in possession of an illegal weapon but they could change their minds.

A hat tip goes to The Firearm Blog for this story.

Being Easily Offended

How can you easily offend the mayor of Washington DC? Easy, promote firearm ownership and safety to the denizens of that forsaken city:

A billboard in downtown D.C. promoting gun ownership and gun safety drew criticism from Mayor Vincent Gray.

“I think it’s offensive,” Gray said. “You know we work very hard to be able to enforce our gun control laws.”

[…]

Gray called the billboard irresponsible.

“To promote the use of guns in the city I think really is just anti-safety,” Gray said.

What’s irresponsible about firearm ownership and safety? Oh, that’s right, it’s offensive to the mayor because the Supreme Court told him that he couldn’t prohibit people living in the city from owning firearms. He’s offended because the Supreme Court stepped on his power trip.

The Ensuring Witch Hunts

Since the shooting in Aurora, Colorado it appears as though permit holders in theaters have become the new witches. Three individuals were valid carry permits were asked to leave a theater by police officers in Cookeville, Tennessee and now a permit holder was removed at gunpoint by police in a theater in Milford, Connecticut:

The theater house lights were illuminated as Officers entered. Patrons were told to raise their hands and file from the theater. As they exited they were patted down and escorted outside.

Officers identified the suspect and with weapons drawn, ordered the suspect to put his hands up. He allegedly remained in his seat while using his cell phone.

He allegedly did not comply with the Officers’ commands, and was taken into custody by force. Officers allegedly removed a loaded handgun from the suspect’s waistband at the small of his back.

The armed man, Sung H. Hwang, age 46 of New Haven, was handcuffed and removed from the theater. Hwang possesses a valid State of CT permit to carry a pistol.

If I’m ever in a theater (or anywhere else) and police officers come in demanding I raise my hands and submit to a pat down I’m going to do what Mr. Hwang did, simply ignore them. Nobody should readily comply with police officers acting outside of the law. Unless officers have a warrant or are arresting you there is no reason you should be expected to submit to a pat down.

Furthermore there was no reason for the police to draw their weapons on a man who wasn’t being hostile. If you or I pulled our weapon on somebody playing on their cell phone we would likely find ourselves in jail, the same should apply to the police.

When all was said and done Mr. Hwang was arrested, the charges being Breach of Peace and Interfering with Police. I don’t know how either charge applies as sitting in a theater isn’t breaching peace and simply ignoring the police doesn’t qualify as interfering with them. It’s too bad the same state that employes the police also controls the courts because Mr. Hwang, as far as I’m concerned, was kidnaped by the police officers and is due compensation for the wrong that was committed against him.

I’m already sick of this witch hunt against permit holders in theaters.

Legislation Being Pushed to Ban Online Ammunition Sales

The gun control advocates just can’t exploit the shooting in Aurora enough. First Schumer puts for an Amendment to a cyber security bill that would prohibit the transfer of magazines with a capacity greater than 10-rounds and now Lautenberg is putting forth legislation to ban online ammunition sales:

The Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act works through four components:

· It requires anyone selling ammunition to be a licensed dealer.
· It requires ammunition buyers who are not licensed dealers to present photo identification at the time of purchase, effectively banning the online or mail order purchase of ammo by regular civilians.
· It requires licensed ammunition dealers to maintain records of the sale of ammunition.
· It requires licensed ammunition dealers to report the sale of more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition to an unlicensed person within any five consecutive business days.

I wonder if my curios and relics federal firearms license (C&R) qualifies me as a dealer (I know I can get dealer discounts as several online firearm retailers)? If it does this legislation is so easily bypassed that it’s not even worth talking about. Even if a C&R doesn’t qualify somebody as a dealer I’m still not sure what the point of this legislation is supposed to be. Effectively it merely has the to potential make somebody wait a little longer to obtain large quantities of ammunition, and that’s only if they care about their purchase being reported. I’m also not sure where Lautenberg came up with the claim that online ammunition sales are anonymous:

U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY4) and advocates from the gun safety community announced new legislation being introduced this week to make the sale of ammunition safer for law-abiding Americans who are sick and tired of the ease with which criminals can now anonymously stockpile for mass murder.

When you purchase ammunition online you must have it shipped somewhere and it must be paid for in some manner, almost always with a credit or debit card. I’m not sure if Lautenberg is aware of this but credit and debit cards are generally tied to a person’s name, address, and social security number. To say online purchases are anonymous is misleading at best. Then again I shouldn’t expect honesty from a politician, they lie for a living.

UN Arms Treaty Failed to Achieve Consensus

It’s funny, every state in the world seems to be preoccupied with disarming their serfs citizens but they can’t come together and agree on how best to disarm their citizens:

The US, followed by Russia and China, said they needed more time to consider the issues.

The BBC’s Barbara Plett at the UN said it was a disheartening end to a month of intense negotiations.

However, the conference chairman said he was confident a treaty could be agreed by the end of the year.

Some delegates accused the US of bowing to domestic pressure from the powerful gun lobby in the run up to presidential elections, our correspondent says.

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of 51 US senators threatened to oppose any agreement that infringed on the constitutional right to bear arms.

This is good news for us serfs, it means that we have a little longer under the United Nations (UN) comes to an agreement on how we’re going to be disarmed. Unfortunately I don’t think we’re going to enjoy this gridlock forever:

Despite the setback, conference chairman Roberto Garcia Moritan said the eventual adoption of an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) was inevitable.

The UN is nothing more than a big group of states coming together to better tyrannize use lowly individuals. States have a vested interest in disarming their people because states exist solely off of expropriating from their people. Eventually the people get sick of having all of this shit taken from them and decide to hold a good old fashion armed rebellion, which ends with a new government being put into place that either starts off as or eventually becomes tyrannical and must be overthrown (it’s such a vicious cycle, you would think we’d learn to stop creating states to steal from us). With all of that said there is some hope as the United States, China, and Russia make great deals of money on exporting arms. All three states have a vested interest in preventing this treaty from passing.

Schumer is Sending All the Wrong Signals

I’m sure you’ve heard that Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced an amendment to the Cyber Security bill that would prohibit the manufacture and transfer of magazines with more than 10 rounds of capacity:

Democratic senators have offered an amendment to the cybersecurity bill that would limit the purchase of high capacity gun magazines for some consumers.

Shortly after the Cybersecurity Act gained Senate approval to proceed to filing proposed amendments and a vote next week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a sponsor of the gun control amendment, came to the floor to defend the idea of implementing some “reasonable” gun control measures.

Needless to say it’s sponsored by all the usual suspects:

The amendment was sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Schumer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).

Of course this amendment makes little sense. It’s being introduced as a method to protect individuals by restricting the maximum number of rounds a criminal can have in their firearm but the Aurora, Colorado shooter’s 100-round AR-15 magazined jammed. Considering that fact wouldn’t the proper response to the Colorado shooting be to encourage people to buy ridiculously high capacity and notoriously unreliable magazines?

I know many gun bloggers are going to tell you to contact your “representatives” and demand that they oppose this amendment. That’s good and all but I think we should have a backup plan, let’s figure out how to easily manufacture reliable standard capacity magazines. Obviously this is the agorist in me speaking but I think it’s time we started ignoring these idiotic prohibitions. If we can manufacture registered parts of AR-15s on a 3D printer producing magazines shouldn’t be too difficult. Attempting to ban something that every yahoo with basic metalworking equipment can produce in a few minutes is impossible and it sends a signal to the state, we’re done complying with your stupid rules, regulations, and prohibitions. To quote Howard Zinn, “Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority.”

In Other News Fire is Hot

Surprising nobody, Obama decided to use the recent Aurora, Colorado shooting to argue for more gun control:

President Obama has added his voice to the push for limits on Americans’ gun use in the wake the massacre last week at a movie theater in Colorado.

Obama, speaking Wednesday evening to the National Urban League, affirmed his belief in Americans’ right to own guns, but he singled out assault rifles as better suited for the battlefield.

“I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms,” Obama said. “But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not on the streets of our cities.”

One cannot believe in an individual right to bear arms but then also believe individuals don’t have a right to bear arms. That’s effectively what Obama said. In fact his statement would have been more accurate if he stated, “I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms that I approve of. However weapons I don’t approve of should be given exclusively to those under my direct command.”

Thanks to the National Firearms Act of 1934 AK-47s are heavily regulated firearms since they are machine guns. The Hugues Amendment then prohibited the transfer of any machine gun to non-police and non-military personell that wasn’t registered by May 19, 1986. Needless to say the price of AK-47s is through the roof because there is a very finite supply of transferable rifles and zero prospect of new ones entering the market. There are AK pattern rifles available for civilian sale but they are strictly semi-automatic and no different than any other semi-automatic rifle that can be fed with detachable magazines (in fact a Springfield M1A, which fires a 7.62x51mm cartridge, is more power than most AK pattern rifles yet is seldom mentioned by advocates of gun control). Of course Obama specifically mentioned AK-47s because the average American links AK-47s to terrorism and communists just as they link anarchism to chaos and violence.

Thankfully gun control has become the thirteenth flood of politics. It’s gets mentioned mostly in whispers but is rarely acted on. On top of that I’ve given up complying with the state some time ago, if they try to prohibit me from owning my AK pattern rifle I’m just going to give them the middle finger and keep owning it. If the state wants to stop me from existing peacefully then I will leave it up to it to initiate the violence.

Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight

As the old saying goes, never bring a knife to a gun fight. Thankfully some criminals do bring knives to gun fights, which makes them much easier to stop:

A citizen with a gun stopped a knife wielding man as he began stabbing people Thursday evening at the downtown Salt Lake City Smith’s store.

[…]

Espinoza says, the knife wielding man seriously injured two people. “There is blood all over. One got stabbed in the stomach and got stabbed in the head and held his hands and got stabbed all over the arms.”

Then, before the suspect could find another victim – a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. “A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith’s grabbed him.”

It’s nice to see that the good guy was not only able to end the situation but was able to do so without firing a shot. Many self-defense cases involving armed individuals end without the need to employ the arm beyond presentation. Criminals often look for easy victims and surrender upon the first indication of armed resistance, something advocates of gun control usually fail to take into consideration.

On an unrelated side note I found the following line in the story armusing:

Police say the suspect purchased a knife inside the store and then turned it into a weapon.

How does one turn a knife into a weapon? I think a knife fits the description of a weapon no matter how you look at it.

The More You Fight the Enemy the More You Become the Enemy

I’m starting to think it’s a universal law that the more you fight an enemy the more you become the enemy. In Russia the Bolsheviks fought the Imperial Czars only to become imperialists themselves. Spanish anarchists fought the state only to become a state themselves, going as far as executing anybody who used money. The United States fought against the British monarchy to gain independence only to have the presidency turn into a practical monarchy. Now Occupy New Hampshire appears to have finally fought corporations long enough that they’ve become a corporation:

On Monday, a small number of Occupy New Hampshire members incorporated the movement as a nonprofit in order to boot their former bedfellows: the Free Staters. Also prohibited from future Occupy events are gun owners who openly carry.

[…]

Membership in Occupy New Hampshire will now require signing statements of solidarity and respect, according to the corporation papers filed with the Secretary of State’s office. And the Occupy members supporting Provost have concluded there is “no place” in Occupy New Hampshire for the Free State Project or guns, according to minutes of a recent meeting.

Although the various Occupy movements claim to hate corporations and restrictions on free speech the movement in New Hampshire has finally fought against both long enough that they’ve incorporated and are restricting free speech (openly carrying a firearm for political reasons is an act of free speech). It’s funny watching a movement that was built on political dissidence become a movement that crushes political dissidence. Now members are required to sign, what amounts to, an oath of loyalty to Occupy New Hampshire.

This is why I don’t fight the state, I merely ignore it and encourage others to follow suit.

Unintended Consequences of Gun Control Advocation

Unintended consequences are always interesting. Take gun control for example, the idea behind it is to reduce the number of guns in public hands but it has been one of the biggest sellers of firearms. Whenever gun control advocates come out and start talking about firearms they want to see banned it’s inevitable that sales of those firearms will go up. I think this stems from the success enjoyed by advocates of gun control in the ’90’s. During that time they managed to mandate background checks be performed on firearm purchasers and prohibited the manufacture and sale of new magazines exceeding 10-rounds in capacity and deceptively named assault rifles for “civilian” use. Like clockwork the gun control crowd is demanding new gun control measures in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado shooting and, as expected, gun sales are increasing:

The number of people seeking to buy guns in Colorado has soared since last week’s mass shooting in the US state’s town of Aurora, say law officials.

In the three days after the shooting, applications for the background checks needed to buy a gun legally were up 43% on the previous week.

[…]

Law officials said gun sales have in the past had risen after significant events, including the election of President Barack Obama and the shooting in Arizona which killed six people and injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in January 2011.

This is often attributed to fears that a mass killing could prompt the government to reconsider the Second Amendment to the US constitution, which gives people the right to bear arms.

I’m sure many of the people buying firearms after the Colorado shooting are doing so in response to the shooting itself and not the push for more gun control (after all, people want to have a means to defend themselves) but the irony of gun sales going up whenever gun control advocates start pushing is entertaining.