Tag: Gun Rights

Persona Non Grata

Gun control advocates haven’t enjoyed a great deal of success in recent times. I believe part of the reason for this is that the Internet has provided us gun owners with a mechanism to voice our side of the story. It was more difficult to be heard by the masses before the Internet, especially if what you were saying didn’t agree with the views of the major media outlets. It appears that gun control advocates are finally recognizing this and are trying to return gun owners to their “proper place” where they may be seen once in a while but never truly heard:

Gun-control advocates are now pressuring Amazon, Google, AT&T, Roku, and other streaming platforms to ban NRA TV — the organization’s private channel of gun-rights advocacy and other weapons-related programming. This takes the fight against the group to a different and dangerous level. It is one thing to condemn the NRA and even to ask businesses not to work with a group that offends some people. It is quite another to silence the point of view of an organization that represents millions of Americans. If successful, the ban on NRA TV will mark a turning point not so much in the battle over gun control as in the debate over political speech and what is permissible within the public square.

It should be noted that attempts to silence NRA TV are just one effort on this front. Gun control advocates have already enjoyed some success by pushing Facebook, Google, and other major websites to curtail the voice of gun owners in many ways.

Private entities have no obligation to provide goods or services to anybody. If Facebook or Google want to ban any mention of firearms, they have a right to do so. But us gun owners are also free to create our own services, which is how we managed to get our voices heard on the Internet in the first place. Before major social media sites became a thing, gun forums, blogs, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels were how us gun owners linked up with one another and put our side of the story out to the public. The nice thing about these forums and blogs is that they were owned and operated by gun owners. I’m not familiar with an IRC server expressly owned and operated by gun owners but it would have been a simple enough matter to setup such a server if needed. Today more and more gun talk is taking place on major social medias sites, which are often owned and operated by individuals who are gun control advocates. Us gun owners have migrated from our own platforms to platforms controlled by our ideological opponents and we have thus made ourselves vulnerable.

This situation can be reversed and if things continue going as they have been in recent times, will need to be reversed if us gun owners want to continue voicing our beliefs. Relying on a hostile entity is always foolish and we may want to consider reversing the trend of doing so.

If Nobody Knows About a Discount and You Take It Away, Does It Really Matter?

Many companies have announced that they’re severing ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA) after the latest shooting in Florida. Why companies are severing ties with an organization that had literally nothing to do with the shooting is beyond my ability to comprehend but it has lead to at least one rather funny revelation. Did you know that Delta offered NRA members discounts on flights? I’ve been a member of the NRA (it’s a membership requirement at the range that I’m a member of) for quite a few years now and I was unaware of this. It looks like I’m not alone:

But the airline said only 13 passengers ever bought tickets with an NRA discount. That translates into each discount costing the airline about $3 million in tax breaks.

If nobody knows about a discount and you take it away, does it really matter?

The State of Georgia responded to Delta’s announcement by revoking roughly $40 million of tax breaks but I’m fairly certain Delta didn’t expect this response. It probably looked at the number of discounted tickets it had given out, realized that nobody even knew about the discount for NRA members, and decided that removing that discount would be a cheap way to do some public virtue signaling. What may have appeared magnanimous (to gun control advocates at least) was really just an extremely cheap way to get some publicity (although it ended up not being so cheap in the end).

So Much for That Narrative

“In order to prevent tragedies like the one that happened in Florida, we must ban magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds,” said the gun control advocate. “The shooter didn’t even use standard capacity magazines,” said the person who actually reads the news:

The Parkland shooter did not use magazines larger than 10 rounds, but gun reform lobbyists are calling on lawmakers to ban higher capacity magazines after the Valentine’s Day tragedy.

The 19-year-old school shooter who killed 17 in Florida on Valentine’s Day had 150 rounds of ammunition in 10-round magazines. Larger ones would not fit in his bag, Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation revealed.

Many gun control advocates claim that forcing shooters to reload more frequently by banning standard capacity magazines will both reduce the number of people a shooter can kill and give law enforcement a window to engage the threat during one of their periodic reloads. Neither claim is based in reality. Reloading a firearm doesn’t take that lone, certainly not long enough to reduce the number of killing or to provide a long enough window to reliably engage the threat.

Sixteen Thousand and Three-Quarters Dimensional Chess

Trump’s game of multidimensional chess to defend gun rights is getting really complicated:

During a live broadcast in the White House Cabinet Room, Trump appeared to signal support for Feinstein’s radical gun control measures which include banning assault-style weapons.

“Dianne, if you could add what you have also — and I think you can — into the bill,” Trump said.

“Joe, can you do that?” Trump asked. “Can you add some of the things. I’ll help. Can you add what Amy and what Dianne have?”

“I’m going to say this,” Trump continued. “We’re going to get it passed.”

As I said before, you can’t trust a popularis because they will do whatever they believe the masses want them to do. Next week after everybody has forgotten about the shooting in Florida he’ll probably be claiming to support gun rights again. And his supporters will believe him because they’ve invested too much of themselves into him to admit that he might not be what they wanted.

Just Ban Bump Fire Stocks, That’ll Make Them Go Away

Politicians have been quick to descend on the corpse in Florida to push their gun control agenda. A flurry of gun control bills have been introduced throughout the United States. Many of these bills are a hodgepodge of restrictions that gun control advocates have been drooling over but have lacked the body count necessary to make a strong emotional appeal. One of these restrictions is a ban on bump fire stocks. Why would a ban on bump fire stocks be introduced after a shooting that didn’t involve a bump fire stock? Because there is a tragedy to exploit and everything on the wish list is introduced.

But a ban on bump fire stocks is meaningless at this point because anybody with a 3D printer can fabricate one:

My Google search of “3D printed bump fire stock” revealed exactly what I expected: a YouTube video of the test firing of a 3D printed bump-fire stock, which was posted by SilkyDionysus4 in April of this year. On October 10, 2017, gun rights advocate, The Jack News, published an article called “Here’s How to 3D Print Your Own Bump Stock Before Congress Bans Them. The article links to a collection of FOSSCAD digital blueprints for a variety of AR-15 parts, including a bump-fire stock.

We live in an age where firearm prohibitions are pointless. Although manufacturing firearms and firearm accessories has always been doable by anybody with a modest shop and a decent amount of knowledge, technology has advanced to the point where even individuals without a shop or a decent amount of knowledge can manufacturer firearms and firearm accessories. 3D printers can print up any number of firearm accessories. Products like the Ghost Gunner allow individuals to finish 80% receivers without any metal working skills.

And it’s not just firearms, prohibiting anything has become pointless. The same technology that enables individuals to easily manufacture firearms and firearm accessories also allows them to manufacturer almost anything else. I’ll reiterate once again that laws are irrelevant and the only thing keeping individuals safe the choice of other individuals to not to bring harm against them.

The Arbitrary Nature of Laws

There are always vultures swooping down after a mass shooting to pick at the corpses. Here in Minnesota the vultures, after gorging themselves on the dead in Florida, have introduced one doozy of a gun control bill.

The bill contains it all. Mandatory registration of firearms, a ban on aesthetically offensive firearms, a ban on purchasing ammunition online, banning people who owe child support from owning firearms (which is rather random), etc. The bill has obviously been sitting on the back burner waiting for a tragedy to exploit.

I think the bill is an excellent example of the arbitrary nature of laws in general. If this laws is passed, I would be declared a criminal. Not because I hurt anybody but because some politicians decided to change the rules on a whim.

That’s ultimately the biggest problem with government. It’s impossible to do any long term planning when the rules can changed arbitrarily. Consider the seemingly simple prospect of buying a home. A home is generally a long term investment. However, a single change of the rules one evening could force you to flee the state less you be arrested for violating the new rules. Suddenly your long term investment becomes a liability that needs to be offloaded so you can regain some capital to acquire a place to live in another state. Moreover, unless you live near the border of a friendlier state, you will likely have to find a new job and social circle.

To Cower And Hide

The school shooting in Florida has really demonstrated the incompetency of law enforcement. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was informed about the shooter on several occasions but never bothered to investigate, the local sheriff received 18 calls about the man but never took any meaningful action, and as the bullets started to fly four law enforcers hung around outside of the school instead of going in:

Not one but four sheriff’s deputies hid behind cars instead of storming Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS in Parkland, Fla., during Wednesday’s school shooting, police claimed Friday — as newly released records revealed the Broward County Sheriff’s Office had received at least 18 calls about the troubled teen over the past decade.

One of the pillars of gun control is that nongovernmental individuals don’t need firearms because law enforcers provide adequate protection. But law enforcers have no constitutional duty to protect you and as we saw in Florida they very well may let you get gunned down instead of trying to protect you.

If you find yourself facing a life or death situation, the only person you can rely on is yourself.

Tossing Aside the Unwritten Rules

I’m currently reading The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan, which covers the period preceding the fall of the Roman Republic. It’s a fascinating book that covers a period of Roman history that doesn’t get enough attention. One of the reoccurring themes in the book is how long established unwritten rules were being continuously violated by ambitious politicos.

Political debate here in the United States is experiencing a similar trend. Although political matters here haven’t quite devolved to the point where politically ambitious individuals are able to raise a street gang to murder their opposition, plenty of other unwritten rules are being violated. For example, at one point there was an unwritten rule against using children as political pawns. That rule has been violated numerous times already but even by past standards the gun control advocates are being extremely blatant:

We’re seeking wisdom from the mouths of babes, these days. So I asked my 12-year-old son if the country would be a better, safer place if the government tried to disarm some or all Americans to reduce violent crime.

“I think that would have the opposite effect,” he said. “The fewer people who are armed, the fewer people there would be to fight against criminals.”

So there we have it: the launch of Pre-Teens Against Infringements of the Right to Self-Defense, right here in my living room.

If you’re less than bowled over by my son’s insights, you’re forgiven. He’s short on experience and incompletely developed in his analytic skills. He also is one person, offering an opinion heavily colored by his parents’ views and the particular American subculture in which he’s raised.

There’s no logical reason why his participation in the discussion—which his mother and I encourage as a stepping stone to full engagement in the world around him—would be more convincing than the arguments of pundits, criminologists, and philosophers, just as there’s no logical reason to pay special attention to the teens now calling for more-restrictive gun laws in the wake of the Parkland shooting. There’s no logical reason that is—but we keep conscripting the tykes into political disputes in an effort to end debate, not advance it.

It’s rather ironic that gun control advocates are, on the one hand, claiming that 18-year-olds aren’t mature enough to own a firearm but people much younger than that are mature enough to be taken with the same seriousness as adults in political debates.

My point in this post isn’t that kids should be ignored during political debates. Different people mature at different rates. Some people are incredibly mature at a young age whereas others seem to never mature. Some kids certainly do have the maturity and intelligence to discuss political matters whereas some adults do not. However, most of the gun control advocates aren’t genuinely listening to what the kids are saying. They’re using the kids as political pawns. Their participation is being pushed so their parents can claim that anybody who opposes gun control hates children. Of course, this is how children are always used in political debates, which is why there was an unwritten rule against using children in political debates.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that the United States is the same as the twilight years of the Roman Republic. History doesn’t repeat itself. It does rhyme though. And there are a lot of things that rhyme between the United States and the Roman Republic during its twilight years.

Fifteen Dimensional Chess

A lot of Trump supporters said that his announcement to push for a ban on bumpfire stocks was really just a game of four dimensional chess. In that case this must be a game of fifteen dimensional chess:

At the same time, Trump made clear Thursday that he will urge several new gun law restrictions — including raising the age for purchasing firearms, something sources said he was considering.

“I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue—I hope!”

I should be surprised by how well Trump, a man with a history of supporting gun control, managed to convince so many gun rights activists that he was really a supporter of gun rights. But I’m not surprise. Politically involved individuals tend to be especially gullible. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be involved in politics.

Gun control advocates should be cheering Trump right now because he’s playing their game of incrementalism. Outright banning firearms has been made difficult by various court rulings. But the courts have also supported banning classes of individuals from owning firearms. Gun control advocates have latched onto this fact and have been pushing to expand the number of classes that can be prohibited. One of the classes they’re currently working to add to the prohibited list is people between the ages of 18 and 20. Of course, none of them seem to want to prohibit 18-year-olds from joining the military so I’m not convinced that they actually believe people that young are too immature to possess a firearm. But it would remove gun ownership privileges from a lot of people and that’s their goal.

Don’t Hire Government Amateurs

Yesterday it was revealed that the school in Parkland, Florida had an armed guard. However, the guard was a government amateur so, as is so often the case with law enforcers who have no actual duty to protect you, when he was needed most he abandoned his post:

An armed security officer on campus where a gunman killed 17 people never went inside the high school or tried to engage the gunman during the attack, a Florida sheriff said Thursday.

That officer has now resigned.

“I think he remained outside for upwards of four minutes,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said during a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school, “was absolutely on campus through this entire event. He was armed, he was in uniform,” Israel said.

If you want quality security, hire private professionals who have a vested interest in keeping you, their paying client, safe.

This revelation also, quite obviously, spits in the face of gun control advocates who believe law enforcers are sufficient protection for everybody. As it turns out, government agents aren’t terribly motivated to protect you since they tend to get paid no matter what happens. If you fail to protect yourself, you end up severely injured or dead. If a private security provider fails to protect you, they no longer have a source of income (and may even face a lawsuit for breach of contract). If a government agency fails to protect you, everybody still pays their taxes to fund that agency.