Commonsense gun laws

 My friend John Richardson over at No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money has an interesting take on "Commonsense Gun Laws" - - -

"The cult of personality known as Giffords is making an effort to get gun owners onboard with their organization. They are calling it Gun Owners for Safety. I think you even get a fancy t-shirt like the one below.

I think when you get down to it that I and most of my readers do actually support commonsense gun laws.

Here are some of the commonsense gun laws I could and would support:

Removal of suppressors from the NFA. (Read the rest of John's post HERE)

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

I have often wondered how Republicans seem to be so adept at snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. Now I know.

Today (8/9/22) on Fox and Friends, I heard Dan Bongino say, "If you remember this you will never be disappointed. Most Republicans on Capitol Hill are really Democrats. 

However, no Democrats on Capitol Hill, NONE, are really Republicans!"

The same can be said for the State Legislature in Tennessee. . . . and other states (looking at you, Florida!).

Culture, Homicides and Violence

Who is more likely to shoot you, an NRA member or a member of the Crips?

The primary difference between these two groups is culture. NRA members tend to be law-and-order types, whereas Crips (or members of any garden variety American street gang) are rather indifferent or openly hostile to laws.

It is the adherence to a social norm – in this case, obeying or not obeying the law – that influences one’s probability to act violently, which in tern (sic) means using a gun to commit unilateral violence (e.g., not self-defense). . . .

Read the rest of this at GunFacts.Info by Guy Smith, and while you are there take a look at his other research.

The B8 target

 I think it is fun shooting at different sizes and styles of targets, but there are some practical reasons that go beyond fun. I had not thought of this aspect of the plain old B8, available free for printing HERE. You can use a quarter to make sure you are printing it to scale.

Here is a tactically relevant application for this target linked through The Firearm Blog:

B8

"Many renowned instructors are using the B8 target in classes, but do we understand why? In a recent IG live, Steve Fisher went over some reasons we use B8 targets. It is obvious that a target with set dimensions gives a standard. This standard allows us to track our score and therefore analyze our score to see improvement. We compare current to past scores with the same or similar conditions. However, the B8 does far more for us. . . . The B8 resembles sizes that have anatomical importance."

Continue reading HERE.

Ask Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett*

With the recent Supreme Court Bruen (New York gun case) decision, I thought it would be a good idea to check in with a couple of gents who were around when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett agreed to a short interview.

LM: How old were you when the Bill of Rights was ratified?

Boone: I was about thirty-seven year old. We had fought the Redcoats and won our independence from King George. We started calling ourselves citizens, not subjects. That war had actually begun on April 13, 1775, over a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. It started with the (British) government trying to confiscate our guns. General Gage had sent his troops from Boston to Concord, MA.  Our folks up there said,

Thank you President Trump

 In 2016 I opined* that the presidential election really wasn't about the next four years, but court appointments would have a lasting effect for decades to come.

Donald Trump won that election and appointed three justices to the Supreme Court.

Last week we got better than I had hoped in the New York gun case. The court recognized an amendment that is actually in the Bill of Rights.

Then the next day Roe v Wade was overturned. 

These would not have been possible if HRC had been elected.

I just wish Mr. Trump had not 

a) been such a lightning rod

b) given the ATF the go-ahead to ban bump stocks.

Even so, thank you President Trump for those court appointments.

*see also this.

Two steps forward, one step back

There were three significant steps taken this past week dealing with life and liberty- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

First, in the New York gun case,* the Supremes declared Thursday,  "New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public." 

One Unconstitutional Law Implicates Many Gun-Control Regulations

 Laws can be interpreted many ways. We seek guidance from the court to know what is legal and what is not. The US Supreme Court has largely ignored the right to bear arms compared to the number of decisions the court has rendered in other areas. We don’t have enough decisions to draw a clear map of where our rights begin and end. The court recently issued an opinion on the right to bear arms in public. This case redefined the legal landscape and gave us a few rules to go by. Let’s look at the unanswered questions to see if we may draw further conclusions. (Read the rest of this insightful post by friend Rob Morse at Slow Facts.)

Let's apply the spirit of the militia clause . . .

 . . . to the reading of the Second Amendment . . . 

The headline in the Bucks County (PA) Courier Times says that we should apply the spirit of the militia clause to the Second Amendment. I see nothing wrong with the headline, but take issue with the writer's assertions. 

He claims, "In all the years I have been debating and discussing gun control, I have never heard the gun rights advocates refer to the first clause." That sort of statement is akin to my saying, "I have never heard it thunder in Montana." Well, I haven't, but that doesn't mean it hasn't.

 Then he goes on to state the logical fallacies that 

"we can't exclude children from bearing arms" and

CEO's calling for gun bans

 Here is a list of CEO's who are gun banners. Not surprisingly, it includes the CEO's of Dick's Sporting Goods and Levi's. Most of these I am unfamiliar with. 

Why is it that people can't understand that we have a criminal violence problem? IF they were able to ban production from today forward, there is something on the order of half a billion firearms extant in the United States. Those won't go away. 

And, btw, how well has their drug ban worked?

And, btw, how well did their alcohol ban work?

2022 Letter

Dear Members of the Senate:

We, the undersigned CEOs, represent American companies from across the country. Like you, we continue to bear witness to the toll of America’s gun violence epidemic and its impact on our communities.