New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg Proposes Blackpowder Regulations

An anti-gun leftist Ruling class tyrant from the northeast?  Naw…

On April 17, New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg issued a statement to the public that he intends to propose a bill or amendment to regulate black powder, and other forms of explosive components, in the wake of the Boston Marathon Massacre. The bill would demand full Federal background checks of anyone seeking to purchase the minor explosive, similar to recent attempts by Congress to require full background checks on the sale of firearms.

In the wake of the deadly bombing attacks in Boston, U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) today announced that he will reintroduce legislation he has proposed in a prior Congress to require that sales of explosive powder be subject to a background check. He will also file the legislation as an amendment to the gun violence prevention bill currently on the Senate floor

From Lautenberg’s own site:

“It is outrageous that anyone, even a known terrorist, can walk into a store in America and buy explosives without any questions asked,” said Senator Lautenberg. “If we are serious about public safety, we must put these common-sense safeguards in place.  While the police have not revealed what specific explosive materials were used in Boston, what we do know is that explosive powder is too easy to anonymously purchase across the country.”

Consider how nanny-statish New Jersey is.  In New Jersey, for example, you can’t pump your own gas.  It’s both a jobs scam and a “safety” scam that 48 other states’ citizens show is complete bull.

See, in 48 other states, you can walk to a gas pump and fill your tank with gallons upon gallons of gasoline.

In 48 states, you can go and pump as much gas as you can afford into your car or an approved container.  In New Jersey and Oregon, you have to kneel before the might of lobbyists and you have an attendant pump gas for you, but you can still buy as much gas as you want.

Fortunately, highly combustible, flammable, and also explosive gasoline has never been used to kill anyone in any kind of attack, ever ever.  Well, except for killing 87 people at once.  And it’s used all the time by arsonists.

So gasoline is totally more dangerous.  It shows again that there are dangerous chemicals and things all around us, and it’s the people we have to deal with, not the tools… because a dedicated villain will always find the tools.

But Lautenberg, who lives in a state where people are considered too stupid to pump their own gas, demands that we regulate black powder.

Of the $27.8 Billion spent each year on firearms, ammunition, clothing, reloading equipment, optics, and accessories by the American public, only about 7-8% of all gun owners reload their own ammunition on a regular basis. This means that only a relatively small amount of people purchase black powder explosives each year, and in comparison to other flammable, explosive, and dangerous household products such as fertilizer and gasoline, the singling out of black powder for stricter regulation bears little statistical evidence that its use in criminal activity is widespread.

As Examiner notes, it’s not prevalent among criminals.  Actual blackpowder isn’t very prevalent (it’s been mostly replaced by Pyrodex), and modern gunpowders basically burn, they don’t quite explode.

Gunpowder is classified as a low explosive because of its relatively slow decomposition rate and consequently low brisance. Low explosives deflagrate (i.e., burn) at subsonic speeds, whereas high explosives detonate, producing a supersonic wave.

From Lautenberg’s site:

Current law allows an individual to purchase as much as 50 pounds of explosive “black powder” without a background check, and also permits an individual to purchase unlimited amounts of dangerous “smokeless powder” and “black powder substitute” without a background check.

And it will cost you shipping out the wazoo.  It’s not cheap to ship that stuff, because you have to comply with DOT regulations and hazmat to ship it already.  Smokeless powder is just a chemical that burns quickly.  When in a shell, with a primer on one end and a bullet on the other, and inside a steel chamber, it becomes useful.  Until then, it’s just a fast-burning chemical compound, and one that happens to be an intrinsic part of the Second Amendment, as ammunition is part of bearing arms.

If one were a terrorist, again, by contrast, you can buy all the gasoline you want.  So you could buy hundreds or even thousands of gallons of gasoline and do whatever you wanted with it.

Ignoring all of that for a moment, consider that Al Qaeda’s online publication, Inspire magazine, has directions on how to make very specific types of explosives.  They detailed the pressure cooker bomb, but they also detail how to use chemicals to mix much more destructive explosives.  The internet is full of destructive bomb-making recipes for those looking for them, and Lautenberg, along with the rest of his dictatorial cohorts, is apparently completely lost on the first word in the acronym IED.

Improvised explosive device.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.  There is always a way for the motivated terrorist.

War is not a contest of force, whether conventional or unconventional, declared or undeclared.  It is a question of will.

If you ban one thing, they will find another to use.  The more you ban, the more liberties are lost, the more the terrorists have terrorized you into crushing your own citizenry and treating everyone like criminals.  They will have won, as the American people will feel defeated by the actions of their own government against the citizenry in knee-jerk response to terrorists who will never follow a law.

You have to stop the individual terrorists.  Ultimately, it is the terrorist that kills, and he is who you have to stop.

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As an aside, while we’re on the subject of background checks for everything, how about we do background checks on who comes into the country, and we stop letting in terrorists and people who will reasonably become terrorists, huh?  Then maybe us US citizens can stop getting screwed with every time we go to do anything?  And how about we do background checks on senators and congressmen and presidents, so if they show any tendencies towards grossly violating oaths to the Constitution and trying to stomp on citizens rights, we don’t let them work in government?

The Immigration Debate and the Boston Terrorists

The AP has this mushball story today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Boston Marathon bombings cast a shadow Friday over the start of debate on legislation to remake the U.S. immigration system, as some Republicans argued that the role of two immigrant suspects raised questions about gaps in the system.

There was no suggestion that the two suspects, brothers who had lived in Dagestan neighboring Chechnya in southern Russia, had entered the U.S. illegally. And authors of a sweeping new immigration bill, which got its first hearing Friday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that their legislation would improve U.S. national security because the estimated 11 million people now living here illegally would have to come forward and undergo background checks.

Those 11 million living here illegally can never pass a background check.  Their first step into the country was to violate US federal law.  They fail.  Every one of them.

There are plenty among that number who have committed further crimes, in fact, there are huge numbers who have committed crimes.  “Sanctuary cities” that don’t turn over illegal aliens to ICE for deportation are full of them, in no small part because local law enforcement does nothing to them.

The Boston terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev could’ve been deported already.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence arrest and conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Other reporting confirms Tsarnaev’s arrest for domestic violence but we’re seeking confirmation of a conviction. Nevertheless he would have been subject to removal for the arrest itself.

This falls under crimes of moral turpitude, which are deportable offenses.

Of course, the immigration bill is about amnesty for illegal aliens and creating more Democrat voters, cheap labor for businesses, and changing the nature of the nation into one that has a huge underclass to rule, and a ruling overclass that distributes the handouts looted from the evaporating middle class.  It’s how socialists stay in power and how socialism and class warfare works.  Whether or not terrorists stay in the country is irrelevant to them.

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They care about neither criminals nor terrorists.  To give some idea of how bad sanctuary cities and sanctuary states are, consider that in Massachussetts, the illegal aliens can hit state representatives while driving drunk and laugh because they know there will be no consequences.

What’s going to happen when you start “background checking” all these illegals and find out they’ve stolen social security numbers, have numerous arrests for DUIs, have numerous arrests for domestic abuse, and such?  It’s all very prevalent among illegal aliens, because many of them tend to be low-class unskilled laborers who well know they can commit crimes because the police will do nothing to them because the politicians will deny the law.

To give a perfect anecdotal example of the sanctuary city mentality, a friend of mine rode with state troopers in WI.  The trooper encountered a car that wanted to race with his unmarked police car, and he obliged just enough so he could make an arrest and take the idiot straight to jail.  When they hit a high enough speed (in a safe area), the trooper pulled over the racer.  Turned out the racer, doing 100 mph as his top speed, was an illegal alien.  No arrest.  The illegal alien walked because it’s WI state policy to not arrest illegals.

Every Democrat immigration bill is about expanding their base.  It’s about destroying the nation and securing Democrat power through the Curley Effect, and it’s about giving away the nation because the Ruling Class Democrats don’t feel like you’ve earned your life – no matter how hard you worked or fought for it, so they’re going to give the nation to someone they feel is more deserving.  After all, you didn’t build that.

Harry Reid, History and Tyranny

Via Drudge, from Real Clear Politics:

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) mocked Second Amendment rights activists while announcing his support for a ban on assault weapons and limits to high-capacity magazine clips on the Senate floor today.

REID: In the 1920s, organized crime was committing murders with machine guns. So Congress dramatically limited the sale and transfer of machine guns. As a result, machine guns all but disappeared from the streets. We can and should take the same common-sense approach to safeguard Americans from modern weapons of war.

Starting from the end of this statement and working back, modern weapons of war aren’t legal (without a lot of licensing) precisely because of the National Firearms Act of 1934 that Reid is alluding to.  But wait, you say – the National Firearms Act came out in 1934?  Yes, yes it did.

Organized crime became an issue in the 1920s because of a great early Progressive idea to make people better: Prohibition.  Prohibition was so important to those who “know what’s best” that the government went out and poisoned US citizens intentionally:

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.”

Early progressives had decided that intemperance needed to be squashed, even if it meant murdering some 10,000 citizens who drink by having government poison them.

The 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, and just like that, the revenue stream for bootleggers and organized crime evaporated overnight.  Coupled with the beginning of the Great Depression exacerbated by FDR’s policies impacting the entire economy, organized crime wasn’t making the same kind of money and thus it wasn’t the same threat it was in the 1920s.

Reid continued saying he’d vote for Feinstein’s “Assault” Weapons Ban:

That is why I will vote for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban – because we must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence. I will vote for the ban because maintaining law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags. I will vote for the ban because saving the lives of young police officers and innocent civilians is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.

There is no “balance” as you move towards tyranny, even if you mock those who warn of tyranny.  There can be no right to grow up safe.  These are wonderful abstract concepts that are high-minded, but impossible.  You cannot “grow up safe”.  The world cannot be made into a safe place.

“Maintaining law and order” would mean enforcing laws first.  Obama doesn’t even enforce gun laws.  Mocking people who oppose the bill as conspiracy theorists just means you don’t have an argument.

The Obama administration has actively engaged in a conspiracy against the Second Amendment by shipping guns to narcoterrorist cartels in Mexico.  You can read all about it.

Lastly, Reid claiming to want to save the lives of young police officers by destroying the Second Amendment they swear an oath to – as part of the Constitution, just means that he cares about protecting organs of the state but not about the rights of the people – the same rights that cop swears to uphold.

As to “saving the lives of innocent civilians” being more important that “preventing imagined tyranny”, scroll back up and read about the Chemist’s War.  The US government actively poisoned people in order to push its Progressive “good idea” of Prohibition, whether people wanted it or not.  The same time that the Senate was looking at banning machineguns, the same government was poisoning people.  Also in the early 1930s, not only was the government banning the right to own machineguns “for the greater good”, they were also infecting black people with syphilis as guinea pigs in the Tuskegee experiment.  There were also forced sterilizations and such going on in the name of eugenic racial improvement, another Progressive idea, all “for the greater good”.

Reid, just like politicians at that time would’ve, is arguing that people should surrender their rights for their own good because government really wants to help them… It wants to help them so much it murders them for their own good – from poisoning people to support Prohibition to sending guns to narcoterrorist cartels to kill people to support gun control.

There is no “imagined tyranny”, there are just increasing levels of tyranny.  With history as our guide, we know we need to stay well-armed to stay safe, and we know that a government that mocks us ultimately means us harm.  They aren’t by, for, and of the people.

Harry Reid is also indulging in the Broken Window Fallacy.  The complaints he makes today about protecting children and cops are ones that are visible.  The tyranny that others warn against isn’t here yet, and takes time to materialize.  But this isn’t some Manbearpig fantasy, we have all of human history to see the repetition of tyranny as Innocents Betrayed illustrates above.  We know what happens when governments get powerful.  We have seen the US government in the last four years send guns to narcoterrorist cartels and hush it up afterwards.  We have seen the US government poison over 10,000 people just to push Prohibition.

There is no imagined tyranny.  It exists, creeping, always encroaching, and always there.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Senate Stalls Gun Control

Good roundup at HotAir to start.

The Manchin-Toomey “wrote it on our yacht” background check-prelude to registration bill went down 54-46, failing to get the 60 votes to pass.

The AWB goes down 40/60. Remember a few weeks ago when Reid claimed they didn’t have even 40 votes for it? He wasn’t kidding. They barely ended up with that much. It’ll be a few minutes before the roll is up, but assuming Republicans voted against it unanimously, that means no fewer than 15 Democrats joined them.

It’s a good start to stalling the tyrannical aspirations of government.

Bloomberg as quoted by HotAir:

Today’s vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington. More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.

Why is it that anti-gun tyrants love using the number 90% so much?  They make up numbers saying guns are going to Mexico at a rate of 90%, and they claim 90% of people support draconian checks as a step towards registration, confiscation, and obliteration of gun rights.  Do they just love targeting minorities of 10%?  Oh, that’s right, they do.

Incidentally, only 4% care about gun control as opposed to every other issue.

Gun-ban propagandist, hypocrite who said he’d shoot his rivals, and fraudulent journalist who was kicked out of England Piers Morgan whined on:

Soon he’ll fade back into obscurity once the schtick of having a lying Brit who threatened violence and lectures down to Americans wears off.  Oh, and it has.

They showed they care about America’s dead and the liberties we fought for, and won’t be swayed by political propagandists dragging grieving families around as political props.

Meanwhile, from the Washington Times, Obama plays the blame game, and says those who oppose him are filthy liars who need to be sent to the gulag:

President Obama angrily blamed the defeat Wednesday of his centerpiece gun-control proposal on lies spread by the National Rifle Association, calling it “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Mr. Obama said in the White House rose garden about 90 minutes after the vote. “It came down to politics.”

No, they didn’t.  Obama has been quite open about his loathing of the Second Amendment and the Constitution in general, and he views it as an obstacle to his grand utopian dream that would be so much easier.  See, the left knows what’s best for you, and they’re going to give it to you by force if they can.

There’s also a certain type of projection on the left.  They accuse others of lying while they do.  The NRA warned of true objectives.

“They claimed that it would create some sort of big-brother gun registry, even though it did the  opposite,” Mr. Obama said. “This pattern of spreading untruths … served a purpose. A minority in the U.S. Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery. It’s not going to happen because 90 percent of Republicans just voted against that idea.”

Of necessity, to work, it had to create a big brother gun registry – which would be either an amendment or a future bill when this one was found.  There was no secret that Democrats were pushing for a big-brother gun registry.  But, as Levar Burton would say, don’t take my word for it – take NY Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s:

There’s that 90% statistic again, too.  They just love it.

And again, the “families” are being led by Democrat propagandists.  I say “families” because Mark Mattioli isn’t represented, nor are many other Newtown families who don’t hold the same opinions as those who are politically aligned and campaigning for the Democrats’ rights-control schemes.

“You’ve got to send the right people to Washington,” he told voters. “That requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it.”

The American people and those who’ve fought for liberty don’t want their tyranny.

We did send the right people to Washington.  We sent Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

But do note what Obama said in there.  The meaning is clear.

…requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

He uses some of the Newtown families as props, and it seems many of them are willing props – but he doesn’t care about them any more than he cared about the hundreds of dead children in Mexico murdered by his Fast and Furious program.

Also remember what Joe Biden said:

And lastly, but not least, the Assault Weapons ban and the limitation on the size of magazines, let me say this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

And Joe Biden today:

“We’re going to get this eventually,” Biden said. “If we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.”

The gun ban anti-rights movement is not out for safety, they’re out for your disarmament, which has horrific long-run consequences.

I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

…let me state this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

We’re going to get this eventually…if we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.

And the anti-gun anti-rights movement will never stop.

Gun Grabber Tyrant Roundup 4/16/13

May as well start with the vice buffoon:

WASHINGTON — The terrorist organization al-Qaida is telling its followers to exploit the so-called “gun-show loophole” to buy semi-automatic weapons that could be used to kill Americans, Vice President Joe Biden warned in an interview with Hearst Newspapers.

Biden, the quarterback of the Obama administration’s anti-gun-violence campaign, said the classified presidential daily intelligence brief that was delivered to President Barack Obama and him last Thursday described “an al-Qaida principal” declaring on an al-Qaida website that supporters ought to “go to Washington and go to a gun show” because a fair portion of gun show sales bypass background checks.

Joe Biden is an idiot.  To begin with, there are no gun shows in DC.

For those who’ve never been to a gunshow, let me give you some idea the kinds of bumper stickers that are sold there amidst the guns and ammo and camo and beef jerky and militaria and holsters:

The people who frequent gun shows are people who are into gun culture.  American gun culture celebrates the United States, the Second Amendment, the US military, and does not, contrary to leftist belief, hate the country.  Nor are people at gun shows (often disproportionately veterans; and almost always Country Class folk) the kind of people to have any tolerance for terrorists.

“You can buy a semi-automatic weapon,” Biden characterized the al-Qaida official as saying. “It’s your obligation to do Jihad, and kill people, kill Americans. In other words, you radicals, what’s so gol’darn hard here? Just go to America and buy a gun.”

Joe Biden has clearly never been to a gun show, and understands neither American gun culture nor Al Qaeda.

At a couple gun shows I’ve been to, I’ve seen straw purchasers and illegal purchasers arrested and walked off by the police.  At all the gun shows I’ve been to, I’ve seen a crowd that’s predominantly of a conservative mindset, slightly older, mostly responsible, and regardless of who they seem they’d be politically based on gender or ethnicity or orientation – again generally more conservative and patriotic.  In the last few years, ethnic groups have become even more diverse (especially regionally), but in general, elements that are criminal or suspicious are turned away.

Gun people don’t want to sell to dangerous people – period.  Gun show clientele, especially the stereotypical “bitter clingers” do not truck with Al Qaeda.  Many of them have actively fought Al Qaeda, or have friends or family serving in the fight against Al Qaeda and in conflict generated by Al Qaeda.  US gun culture and Al Qaeda are diametrically opposed forces.  Biden and the left don’t get that.

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From WaPo, an opinion that gets it wrong pretty quick:

Those who support stricter gun control fear that the passage of time since the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School will result in further watering-down of measures. They should not, however, discount the risk that attempts to shave a few weeks or months off the usual legislative process will result in bad laws, with unintended and lasting consequences.

Pretty much all gun control laws are bad laws.  Ones made in the rush to dance in the blood of children are made according to Rahm Emanuel’s maxim of “Never let a good crisis go to waste” and “you can do things you normally couldn’t” in the wake of a crisis.  They are pushing for bad laws, and the families are pushing for bad laws.  Nothing in the laws they push will help anyone except criminals and would-be tyrants.

While pro-gun forces may overstate the case against expanded background checks — they are not, for example, a prelude to disarming the citizenry — President Obama and his allies have understated the difficult legal questions posed by extending the background-check system to cover more sales and transfers.

Wrong.

Expanded background checks, and the necessary registry to ensure compliance with background checks, are a prelude to disarming citizenry.  The included background checks as well as any other barriers to entry (taxes on ammo, guns, legislation restriction bearing and use of arms) are all there to prevent people from getting involved in exercising their Second Amendment rights.  The issue is that not only is it an attempt to track gun owners for later confiscation, it’s also a cultural attack by keeping people from ever owning guns by making it more difficult to do so.

Australians who used to be gun owners, or who try to still be gun owners, discuss how they have to have their rifles locked up at their club, have to have licenses, inspections, and have to comply with a myriad of laws in order to exercise what is a denied right that only still exists as a shadow in the form of a severely regulated hobby.

It is a prelude to disarming the citizenry.  Just ask people who’ve talked to dear leader.

Given the time and attention that they deserve, these issues could be addressed. But artificial deadlines and an undue sense of urgency guarantee worse results and continued mistrust on both sides of this debate.

There is no surrender of rights.  Period.

There is no mistrust.  The political left and those who favor gun control want to deny rights.  They say so.  Thus there is no compromise with denial of rights.  They are pushing to keep a crisis going in order to erase rights.  That’s all.  There is no debate to be had – there is an assault on rights.

It sounds absolutist, and it is.  They aren’t looking at how to deal with the murderer, they’re looking at how to target people who they think shouldn’t own firearms because to some degree Mao was right about the origins of political power.  Because the left mistrusts and loathes the American people as stupid people who need to be controlled, they want us all disarmed – you and me and your family and your friends – all “for our own good”.  I trust them to continue to assault our rights – they’ve stated it’s their intention.

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John Bolton and John Yoo cover Obama’s back-door gun control through the UN:

Even before his most ambitious gun-control proposals were falling by the wayside, President Obama was turning for help to the United Nations. On April 2, the United States led 154 nations to approve the Arms Trade Treaty in the U.N. General Assembly. While much of the treaty governs the international sale of conventional weapons, its regulation of small arms would provide American gun-control advocates with a new tool for restricting rights. Yet because the Constitution requires that two-thirds of the Senate give its advice and consent to any treaty, Second Amendment supporters still have a political route to stop the administration.

…the new treaty also demands domestic regulation of “small arms and light weapons.” The treaty’s Article 5 requires nations to “establish and maintain a national control system,” including a “national control list.” Article 10 requires signatories “to regulate brokering” of conventional arms. The treaty offers no guarantee for individual rights, but instead only declares it is “mindful” of the “legitimate trade and lawful ownership” of arms for”recreational, cultural, historical, and sporting activities.” Not a word about the right to possess guns for a broader individual right of self-defense.  Gun-control advocates will use these provisions to argue that the U.S. must enact measures such as a national gun registry, licenses for guns and ammunition sales, universal background checks, and even a ban of certain weapons. The treaty thus provides the Obama administration with an end-run around Congress to reach these gun-control holy grails.

…The attempt to advance gun control through the Arms Trade Treaty might surprise average Americans, but not liberals, who have been long frustrated by the Constitution’s limits on government. Gun-control statutes, like any others, have to survive both the House and the Senate, then win presidential approval. It is far easier to advance an agenda through treaties, unwritten international law and even “norms” delivered by an amorphous “international community.”

Yup, because they can’t get in through the front because you’ll oppose it, they’ll try to side with a collection of dictators-for-life and tyrants in the UN so they can take your rights.  If you’re armed, you’re still a free man, and the global elite don’t like that (sounds tin foily but it’s not if you look at what they want).  There simply are international institutions dedicated to removing your rights, and that’s just what they do.  You’re the last obstacle in “civilizing” the world; and then they can use force to make people do what’s best.

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And a shrewd piece from David “Broke the Gunwalker Story” Codrea:

The draft of S. 649 that provides the framework for the legislative arguments that lie ahead contains an item that could prove highly controversial, even though no one has, until now*, recognized it, let alone raised it as an issue. …

“[I]t shall be unlawful for any person who is not licensed under this chapter to transfer a firearm to any other person who is not licensed under this chapter, unless a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer has first taken possession of the firearm for the purpose of complying with subsection (s),” the section on Firearms Transfers states. “Upon taking possession of the firearm, the licensee shall comply with all requirements of this chapter as if the licensee were transferring the firearm from the licensee’s inventory to the unlicensed transferee.”

But this “shall not apply,” the section continues, “to … bona fide gifts between spouses, between parents and their children, between siblings, or between grandparents and their grandchildren.”

The issue? Absent a change in federal law, 1 USC § 7 – Definition of “marriage” and “spouse”

Basically, if you have a gay marriage or civil union, you’re not exempted.  Thus, if you’re gay, you’re denied Second Amendment rights because of the definition of marriage (though at this point they’ve been reduced to privileges).

While marriage as an institution is one man and one woman; this law by recognizing marriage for 2A purposes and not recognizing gay unions does deny gay partners to enjoy their Second Amendment rights between each other without asking government permission.

Solution?  Don’t pass the stupid law that discriminates against gays and lesbians by requiring government-sanctioned marriage.  And as Andrew Wilkow notes, you can solve the whole marriage issue by finding where in the Constitution it says the government can regulate marriage… and since it doesn’t, you just hand it all back to individual churches (or states) to decide.  That way if the Reformed New New Reformed Church of Vermont wants to marry gays, they can – and it doesn’t infringe on their beliefs; and if the Al-Mohammed Al-Akbar Mosque of California doesn’t want to, they aren’t forced by government to marry gays – and it doesn’t infringe on their beliefs.

You leave them alone to live how they like, and you leave them alone to defend themselves how they like.  Armed gays don’t get bashed.  (And insert joke here about right to arm bears.)

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And finally, calling out the gun-grabber tyrants, Thomas Sowell’s piece – Gun Control Crusaders Unconstrained by Facts:

The dirty little secret is that gun control laws do not actually control guns. They disarm law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals, who remain armed in disregard of such laws.

In England, armed crimes skyrocketed as legal gun ownership almost vanished under increasingly severe gun control laws in the late 20th century. (See the book “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee Malcolm). But gun control has become one of those fact-free crusades, based on assumptions, emotions and rhetoric.

What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter.

The Cato Institute estimates upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious, just because the media pay no attention to them.

It’s the Broken Window Fallacy as related to public policy.  You can’t see the benefits of the gun – just as you don’t see the baker’s new suit.  You have to look for the hidden costs and benefits.  You see the broken window and its replacement just as you see the new gun control law “doing something”.  Most people don’t see the loss of safety through disarmament – at least not until it’s too late.

Restricting the magazine capacity available to law-abiding citizens will not restrict the magazine capacity of people who are not law-abiding citizens. Such restrictions just mean that the law-abiding citizen is likely to run out of ammunition first.

Eloquent and to the point.  Classic Sowell.

Some people may think that “assault weapons” means automatic weapons. But automatic weapons were banned decades ago. Banning ugly-looking “assault weapons” may have aesthetic benefits, but it does not reduce the dangers to human life in the slightest. You are just as dead when killed by a very plain-looking gun.

And they will come for those next.

Photo by Oleg Volk.

One of the dangerous inconsistencies of many, if not most, gun control crusaders is that those who are most zealous to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens are often not nearly as concerned about keeping violent criminals behind bars.

Leniency toward criminals has long been part of the pattern of gun control zealots on both sides of the Atlantic. When the insatiable desire to crack down on law-abiding citizens with guns is combined with an attitude of leniency toward criminals, it can hardly be surprising when tighter gun control laws are accompanied by rising rates of crime, including murders.

The New Anti-Rights Lobbyists – The Newtown Families; And Why The Answer On Gun Control Is No

The sympathy I expressed for them a few days ago and the belief that they are simply tragic victims driven by grief is something I now find myself calling into question.  Many may still be blind with grief, but read the story by Politico “Newtown Families: Victims Turn Lobbyists” and you may find yourself becoming rapidly cynical:

… the Newtown families, political novices just a few months ago, are proving to be savvy, effective advocates as they promote the gun legislation that has finally begun to move through the Senate. The families are well-educated, and many are well-off. They have been polished and sharp on TV. They’re mostly non-political, but quite accomplished in their own fields. With access to money and media, they’re using persistence, visibility — and, most all, their unique moral authority — to help prod Senate action. They also have their own lobbyists — several of them, in fact.

They’re pushing anti-rights legislation.  Maybe some among them think it’ll “save children”, but as I illustrated last time, the things they’re asking for wouldn’t have prevented Sandy Hook.  They are pushing for exactly what anti-gun groups have been pushing for for years, though.

They’re pushing for something that is a step towards widespread disarmament, emotionally pushing for things that they feel are so critical that they “must” be done, emotionally pushing for things so hard that “now is the time” before anyone starts to look at the bigger picture calmly and at the long-term implications of what happens when citizens are left disarmed.

Then there are the comments by their Democrat political handlers:

“These are smart, articulate people, who don’t have a scintilla of Washington about them,” said Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, which has been helping the families navigate D.C. “But they virtually cannot be denied a meeting. There are not many groups of people that can get a meeting with any senator they want, whenever they want.”

He’s a lying about his group.  They Democrats came in and the families have been embraced by the Democrat party and anti-rights, anti-gun citizen disarmament groups as the heartwrenching emotional story they need to use to acquire more power.  There’s keeping rights, restoring rights, and loss of rights.  They’re pushing for loss of citizen rights, and they’ve got leftist Democrats guiding them the whole way.  There is nothing “third way” about Bennett’s group, either – they’re a partisan Democrat group used to target low-information moderates.  Their notable members include such partisan leftist Democrats as Kathleen “F the Hatch Act” Sebelius and Ken “Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever” Salazar.

He is right about the demands they can make.  They can portray anyone who rejects them as devoid of sympathy, of being a cruel monster who wants dead children.  They and their handlers are exploiting the respect we offer the grieving to push their agenda.

A group of experienced operators is guiding these families — to a degree that has irritated some pro-gun Republicans. An uber-strategist for the families is Ricki Seidman, a familiar face at the top levels of Democratic politics ever since she ran the Clinton-Gore campaign’s famous 1992 war room. Seidman, a senior principal with TSD Communications, was Vice President Joe Biden’s communications director during the 2008 general election, and helped the White House win confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotmayor.

Bennett’s Third Way connected the families with a lobbying firm, Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, that set up more than 25 Hill meetings this week alone. And Lara Bergthold, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns now with Griffin, Schein in Los Angeles, is helping to manage the media onslaught.

These are political operatives using the families as props (at best).  It would be nice to believe that the families in their grief are simply pawns in this, but then there are comments like this:

“This is now part of my day-to-day life, and it is a full-time job to me and my family,” Jillian Soto said. “To be honest with you, I still don’t know how the mechanics in Washington work. I still find it absurd that senators can even say my sister wasn’t murdered with an assault rifle. She was shot multiple times in front of her kids, and that’s not OK to me. It’s not OK to most Americans.” (As her raw language indicates, Soto is working with Bloomberg’s group.)

An assault rifle is select-fire, so no, she wasn’t murdered with an assault rifle.  Those are highly restricted and have been since the GCA of 1934.  The killer did not have an assault rifle.  So no, she wasn’t.  Soto’s indignation is intended to get you mad at pro-rights senators for questioning her – with her dead sister as a moral bulwark, she can scream and it’s considered callous and heartless and horrific to correct her.  The constant push against the rights of citizens, ignoring the actual data, is now, to her, “part of my day-to-day life and it is a full time job to me and my family”.  She’s going to press to restrict your rights full time based on the acts of a madman – a madman who would never be stopped by the solutions she champions, and if her solutions pass, a lone madman who in time will be replaced by an administration of madmen – as history shows us again and again.

This is a very clever political movement being handled by the Democrats.  They’re going to dance in the blood of those children as long as they can to get more power.

What started as a support group is now a lobbying force unlike any other to descend on Capitol Hill. The family members typically begin their pitch to senators softly, telling the story of the child that they lost. They gently say they could not have imagined themselves in this position, but they’re doing it to honor the memory of their children. They say they’re supporters of the Second Amendment, and just want to have a conversation.

They don’t want a conversation.  That’s a lie, just the same as their “I’m not racist, I have a black friend” claim of support of the Second Amendment.  They have demands.

They aren’t having a conversation and asking about how to deal with madmen, they’re pushing for laws that violate the Constitution and serve as a framework to disarm the populace – their handlers know it, their handlers have been pushing for it, and most likely the families know it, too.  They may well be pushing for it because they think it’s a “good thing” and they don’t understand the nature of rights; or driven mad with grief, they only understand that some alien thing that they don’t understand but want to do away with has taken their loved one.

But there’s nothing subtle about the way some of them conclude their visits: by leaving behind a color card with a photo of their slain relative. Nicole Hockley, who introduced President Barack Obama in Hartford this week, hands senators a card with three photos of her son Dylan, who was 6 when he was gunned down. One frame shows him grinning, in a Superman shirt.

“Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06 – 12/14/12,” the card says. “Honor his life. Stand with us for change. NOW IS THE TIME.”

“Now is the time” is the kind of fierce urgent emotional demand that stifles debate.  The entire purpose is to generate an emotional response and demand NOW NOW NOW without stopping to question why or what is being done.

The universal background checks they want, the universal registration that background checks require to be complete, the denial to citizens to actually bear, trade, or acquire arms, the denial of citizens to own modern arms – none of that would’ve prevented the murders at Sandy Hook.  But they demand action “NOW NOW NOW” because that stifles debate.  They demand “NOW NOW NOW” and any question of why, or what these things will change is stopped by bringing up their dead children.  The argument for immediacy and the argument for necessity are well-known pleas of tyrants, and are the hallmark of liberal fascism, where something must be done for your own good right NOW…  Again, if you take the time to ask about why, or what the long-term effects are (say as in “we need to pass it to see what’s in it” Obamacare), you’re shouted down.

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I’m a veteran.  When I write things like “for those who’ve fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know”, I mean it.  It’s not a cliche, it’s a reality.  There are a lot of people, myself included, who fought for our rights and our Constitution.  Our nation is unique in that we don’t swear an allegiance to a president or a king or an autocrat.  We swear our oath to a piece of paper.  We swear it to a contract made by free people to create a government that serves us.  We swear our oaths to that Constitution and the protection of those natural rights it guarantees.

The natural right to self defense against oppression, against tyranny large and small, whether it be a dictatorial government or a lone criminal, is something that many men and women have fought and died for.  The forces against the natural right to self defense are those who would be our masters, who demand autocracy and think they know best and should tell us how to live – tyrants.

The demand that we surrender rights that our forefathers and sometimes our friends fought and died for is unacceptable.

Those rights were fought for, and men and women died for those rights, so that people back home could be safe with the protections those natural rights provide.  They the honored dead and we the veterans did not fight for those rights so that those rights could be hastily abandoned to a political cry of “now is the time”.

No.  Never is the time.

–

The Newtown families, if truly driven by grief, will still have my sympathy, but what they demand in the name of children and family who would not even be protected by the unconstitutional laws they demand is anathema to those who have served and those who remember our honored dead who fought for those rights.  The contract that our honored dead and we the veterans signed was to protect those rights.  Against more than two hundred years of adversaries within and without we’ve fought to preserve those rights with millions of men and women who’ve served and hundreds of thousands who’ve died in service – all to protect those rights.

The emotional demand that one tragedy, manipulated by fiendish politicians for their own power and demand to control the American people, mean that we the citizens give up the rights bought and paid for in blood by our honored dead and our veterans and often ourselves as veterans is one that can only be answered with a resounding no.

Today those demanding the surrender of our rights and our arms do so with words, because we have arms.  With history as our guide, when we have no arms, they won’t use words anymore.  This is again why we have fought for those rights.

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There may be solutions to limit the horrors in the world, but abrogating the right of self defense that is intrinsic to the contract of our safe and secure society is not an option.  We may still have individual madmen and criminals, but we have no tyrants here – our tragedies are counted in ones and tens but never in millions.

Stalin famously said that a single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.  To a dictator’s perspective, he’s right.

To a free man’s perspective and to a patriot perspective, that’s not the case.  A single death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a million individual tragedies.  The twenty-six individual tragedies at Sandy Hook do not outweigh the incomprehensible human suffering and death endured by millions of individual citizens who fought so that we could live free covered by the protections of the natural rights our Constitution provides.  The willing and also unwilling sacrafices of those millions of individual tragedies and sufferings thus prevented millions more individual tragedies.  Those who fought and died knew that they fought for that piece of paper and the rights it guaranteed.

The actions of one madman and the desire to correct those twenty-six tragedies can be understood.  They are fathomable.  The rows upon rows of graves of those who fought to prevent greater tragedies are often beyond comprehension and thus some folks can miss the far bigger picture.  They aren’t seen as a million individual tragedies and lives of suffering undertaken for a larger cause to ensure greater rights that protect us all – those lost lives are right in front of us and yet some forget both those lost lives and the payments in blood they made on liberties.

Each one is an individual tragedy.

Each individual tragedy was undertaken as an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

And yet there are those who would still trade away that liberty bought at so dear a price for temporary security… and they would soon find themselves with neither.

The Gun Control Sellout Begins

There’s too much to cover, so this is just going to be another news roundup.

Pat Toomey, was riding on Joe Manchin’s yacht, the “Black Tie” and getting all boozed up with his fellow Ruling Class goon to come up with a way to screw you out of your rights…

Senator Mark Kirk said the following to reporters about gun control and background checks and in particular the so called bi partisan deal reached by Senators Toomey and Manchin, “You guys really ought to go out to National Harbor and see the Black Tie, which has been much of the reason for much of the bipartisan cooperation around here. Sometimes alcoholic beverages might be served and ties might … get loosened.”

So there you go. Your elected officials getting liquored up on a a mega yacht conspiring to infringe on your inherent rights.

…is now being praised by Bloomberg’s Mayors For Citizen Disarmament.

The filibuster to prevent any gun bill from getting to the Senate floor ended because 16 Quislings RINOs agreed to go ahead and vote for “discussion”… which will be the same vote that comes along later when a “reasonable” “common sense” bill that’s wholly unconstitutional and is a compromise between you and the government that wants to strip you of your rights.  In other words, just the tip, baby.

The Second Amendment is not up for discussion unless they want to repeal it.  Which they do, but they know they’ll never get the states and the public to agree on it.

Text of the Orwellian-titled bill here.

And if you think the House is going to stop anyone from disarming you for the good of the state’s power, today crying carrot Speaker of the House John Boehner said he doesn’t need Republicans to pass bills in the House.  For those of you who’ve had a long day and miss this – the point is he’ll just pass Democrat bills.

Of course the media’s been doing their part, from citing Al Qaeda as a source saying we need more gun control (Yeah, why didn’t AQ try using guns against US citizens?  But why did they do it against unarmed people in Mumbai?  Rifle behind every blade of grass, get off my lawn, etc., perhaps?) and then CNN was profusely thanked by Democrat anti-gun Senator Joe Manchin for their neverending propaganda during the Sandy Hook massacre:

Berman: Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, you’ve been working around the clock for a compromise deal. I think you have a very busy few weeks ahead of you still.

Manchin: We appreciate your support, too, this is very, very important.

And just to throw in the last of this garbage in with the pile, Joe Biden doesn’t think you should own guns, because you think it’s like owning a Ferrari… which begs the question, what’s wrong with driving a Ferrari?

“It used to be we were dealing almost exclusively with hunters,” Biden said on MSNBC. “There’s a whole new sort of group of individuals now who, I don’t know what the numbers are, that never hunt at all but they own guns for one of two reasons: self protection or they just like the feel of that AR-15 at the range.”

“They like the way it feels. You know, it’s like driving a Ferrari,” he said, raising his arms as if shooting a gun.

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.

That rifle is a tool of freedom, and without it, freedom dies.

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

- George Orwell

Freedom is mighty nice, but it’s sad that freedom can only be maintained with tools.  Yes, clown, you’re not dealing with hunters.  You’re dealing with free men.  You’re dealing with people who own guns for self protection from government because reason doesn’t work against a ruling class that thinks they know what’s best for us and decides to dominate us.

Biden is a buffoon, but because he has no filter on anything that he says and speaks as though he has a political version of Tourette’s, he is actually identifying a big section of the Second Amendment crowd.  They (we) own AR-15s for self-defense because that is the critical function of the Second Amendment – to protect against oppressors large and small.  High-speed low-drag gear is cool, but that’s a far second place compared to what it defends.

Rand Paul is right.  And his final sentiment in that piece is one echoed here:

Our rights are not subjected to polls. Whether it is popular or not popular, I took an oath to the Constitution, and I am prepared to stand with other senators or alone to protect the freedoms that our Founding Fathers fought to preserve.

Maryland Governor Taxes Rain

Breitbart:

Maryland Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley has instituted a tax on citizens for the amount of rain that falls on their property.

The tax, officially known as a “storm water management fee,” will be enforced in nine of the state’s counties. The state legislature passed it in 2012 purportedly to “raise revenue to cleanup [sic] the Chesapeake Bay,” according to MarylandReporter.com.

Former 2012 GOP U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino bashes the tax in a Wednesday afternoon press release. The law “requires individuals, businesses, and even charitable organizations and houses of worship to pay a tax based on the amount of rain that falls on their property and the ‘impervious surfaces’ on their land,” he says.

The tax, mandated by the EPA and enforced locally, will be calculated “through satellite surveillance of your property,” the statement claims.

In case you forgot, Democrats love taxes.  So much so they will tax rain.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To Each According to Your Ability, To Each According to Your Need

First she said that children are property of the community.

Now she says you have the right to have all your needs fulfilled at all times.

You can feel like you earn more, to pretend to have meritocracy, but really, everyone needs all of their needs cared for at all times.  The doctor has no right to his labor – he has to labor for the community good.  The farmer has no right to his crops – he is there to provide for the eaters.  The builder has no right to the house he builds – he is there to provide for those who want houses.  The woman has no right to herself – she is there to provide for men who need her body.  The healthy man has no right to his parts – he is there to be disassembled and harvested by those who need his organs.

To each according to your ability, to each according to your need!  Eat the rich!

Via the People’s Cube:

Democrats Like Taxes

In other news, water is wet.

From WaPo, easily summed up by their graphic:

WaPo tries to come up with some explanation for this strange phenomenon that no one has ever realized before:

What explains that massive disparity between Democrats and Republicans/Independents when it comes to the tax system?

Part of the answer may well be that Democrats are broadly supportive of the idea that government can and should collect taxes in order to provide services for the American public while Republicans and independents are more skeptical about giving money to the federal government to spend.

Another part may be that the tax question winds up being read by partisans as a broader test of their feelings about the federal government. Democrats, with President Obama in the White House, are more likely to feel favorably (or at least express a favorable opinion) about the government. Republicans are not.

Democrats liked big taxes under other administrations, they just liked them for their programs.  Under Obama, the well-meaning but foolish Democrats get more of their pet “save the world” projects, and they get plenty of self-serving plunder to boot; and the ill-meaning collapse-the-system Democrats get to hurt the “evil” producers in order to create “social justice”.  The power to tax is the power to destroy, and they use the power to tax to target people they want to destroy.

It’s more than simply viewing the government as a nanny state that takes care of everything and the feeling that money comes from nowhere.  It’s also viewing the government as a benevolent wonderful provider of a utopian state that can only be realized once all the evil people who hate utopia are eliminated… through taxation driving them away.

The tax system is a weapon, and they wield it as such against perceived class enemies.  Nothing really new here to those in the know, just confirmation.  (Sort of like how every year at Christmas a study comes up showing conservatives give more to all charities because liberals think they “gave at the office” through taxes.  Liberals are amazed, conservatives go “yeah, and?”)