…He sent back a Feb. 20 email from Victor Bonett in the attorney general’s office that said, “OAG is withholding the Jan. 9, 2013 letter from Lee Levine and certain responsive emails between OAG and MPD, pursuant to D.C. Official Code Section 2-534(a)(3)(A)(i), (a)(4) and (e).”
Mr. Levine’s letter provided new information, such as that the source of the “high-capacity” magazine. “Meet the Press briefly borrowed the empty magazine from a private citizen who lives outside of the District of Columbia and who ‘Meet the Press’ understood possessed the magazine lawfully,” he wrote.
The NBC lawyer also claimed, “The magazine was immediately returned to its owner following the broadcast.”
However, according to a police “property record” document, a Kay Industries 30-round magazine was recovered from Mr. Gregory (at a redacted address) as part of an active investigation. The document is signed on Jan. 9, two days after Mr. Levine said the magazine had been returned to its owner.
So the mag they claim they borrowed was returned and yet a mag was still seized. So no matter what NBC’s story, if the DC police seized a mag, that’s all it takes to violate the law. Mere possession, and that’s it.
Good to see folks with resources, regional proximity, and ability are pursing this.
No matter how it turns out, it’s a splendid case to use for anyone who’s arrested or charged from now on to illustrate a failure of equal application of the law.
If the NRA really cared about gun rights…they wouldn’t support policies that take away the ability of thousands of people every year to keep and bear arms because they’re f***ing dead. By this simple fact the NRA reveals itself not to have any concern for gun rights or gun owners, but merely to be an advocate for the gun business – a quasi-criminal syndicate of shady industrial corporations for whom the deaths of their customers and innocent bystanders are actually more profitable than keeping them alive.
It gets stupider, but it’s all basically Tim Robbins’ speech from Team America:
As long as the death rate is low enough for people in general to still leave their houses to visit a gun store, murder is all profit for them: It perpetually sows the seeds of fear, insecurity, paranoia, alienation, and rage that bring more people to patronize their business.
Yeah, it’s pretty stupid. In fact, it’s unintentional parody of the left. And here we get to the best part:
The NRA and its fellow-traveler gun anarchy organizations have nothing whatsoever to do with Constitutional rights: They are a priesthood of murder fanatically committed to the promotion of human destruction and suffering, because at their core are businesses that depend on it, and that could not financially survive on the idle interests of hobbyists in a safe and secure America.
That a Daily Kos diarrheaist doesn’t understand natural rights isn’t a surprise. That he (or she, or shim/he-er or whatever) thinks that their rambling “businesses=evil” rant accurately reflects reality is both funny and sad. Funny because it’s ludicrous, sad because it displays such a narrow breadth of mind that’s completely devoid of any receptiveness to data that would disprove or at the very least give pause to such wild-eyed manic hatred and belief in the pure evil of the NRA and people who believe in the natural rights of self defense and the tools that enable those rights. (Troubadour bolded that “Priesthood of Murder”, not me, btw.)
And this brings us to my real point here. Criticizing Troubadour’s rant is sort of like criticizing a North Korean propagandist. They’re either so woefully misguided that you have to pity them, or they’re so absurdly convinced of their own ludicrous crackpot nonsense that all you can do is laugh at them. Besides, Cam already criticized it.
But in this case, Troubadour has unconciously made one of the most badass and fun critiques of the NRA, and totally for the wrong reasons. Troubadour devolves into unwitting self-parody, but a self-parody that’s made utterly sidesplittingly hilarious to me because…
PRIESTHOOD OF MURDER IS SO INCREDIBLY METAL.
The entire diarrheaist diatribe is so over the top that every new phrase is worthy of an album title (or even a band name).
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So let’s explore the fictional history of the most metal of all civil rights organizations, the NRA. \m/ d(-_-)b \m/
Priesthood of Murder is obviously the most metal, and the NRA’s signature album. It was both a critical and commercial success, and marked the turningpoint for the NRA from just another metal band into the devastating metal powerhouse that they ultimately have become.
But the NRA’s badass discography doesn’t just begin there. It starts way back with their low-budget garage releases when they first got going:
Those early days were marked with a distinct sound that the metal world hadn’t yet warmed to. But the band stayed dedicated, despite some lineup changes as members settled into their roles and some dealt with the difficulties of a harsh tour schedule.
At least one of their later studio albums would recapture those intial sounds, going back to some of their older work that had matured out on the road, forging an album that showed the same spirit, but greater skill:
The DK criticism gets even more metal as it goes:
For decades this vile exercise in the banality of evil has driven murderous civil wars and genocides throughout the world without any sort of consequences blowing back on them, and now they have brought their agenda home.
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NRA, as happens to many bands, found themselves in a rough patch for a year after their harsh touring schedule. After a short break, the band members realized that the regular world they’d returned to off the tour bus wasn’t for them. The returned to the studio with a renewed look at the world after their resting period, and cranked out another of their early albums, now widely regarded as a technical advance for the band as their skills developed:
And their next release was after a very successful European tour, which garnered the band not only attention from an international audience, but spiked interest in the band back in the United States. It included a 2-disc set, the first being the album, and the second being a collection of European-only singles that were previously unreleased in the US.
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This is about as metal as it gets:
Now the American people are the grist for their mill, grinding human bodies of all ages to make their bread, and cavalierly dictating terms to the US government in the face of overwhelming outcry from 90% of the citizenry demanding greater regulation and accountability.
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It was then that NRA kicked out one of their most popular albums, considered by purists to be the truest-to-form NRA, and widely considered the last of their “early” albums.
That period of early albums was later revisited when they released a collection of studio jams and songs from out-of-print records:
Coming out only 9 months after “Overwhelming Outcry”, the NRA fiercely charged up the charts with their next album:
It just keeps getting better (or worse, if the clown wanted to be taken seriously):
No one is free while the manufacturers of arms can overrule and hijack the Constitution without the consent of the people whose lives they harvest like demons in business suits. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness cannot be protected in a state of deliberately cultivated violence.
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While “No One Is Free” proved to be a turning point in the early years with the band’s new guitarist…
…it was widely considered to be eclipsed by the return of their old guitarist from “Fanatically Committed” – but unlike some bands, NRA welcomed the older and kept the newer, though the next album’s title would be an inside joke about the guitar lineup changes:
After another tour, they released a solid live album, with tracks from various tours – both early and late, that was well-received by fans:
But little could prepare the metal world for the NRA’s most recent release, an aggressively badass studio album hailed by metalheads as staying true to form that had just revisited in “Sowing the Seeds of Violence” – and taking new steps from that album, yet again refining their sound:
There’s also been much talk of some alternate projects, including a punk album called “Anarchy Organizations”, and a collaborative effort called “Smirking at Irony”, neither of which have been discussed much by the band in interviews. Rumors have circulated for years about a country-horror themed album called “Cold Dead Hands”, but right now the band’s focus is on their current tour.
Whatever the future may be for NRA, their impressive discography of heavy metal has dominated the charts for years, and shows no signs of stopping. Rock on.
A tweet from Cody Wilson reveals the truth about the Liberator pistol project: the D0D has requested that Defense Distributed remove their files from the internet, and Cody Wilson has complied. Clicking on the Downloads tab at defcad.org yields this message: “DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.” The DoD Trade Controls office is technically part of the State Department. As libertyandsuch.com points out, the mega-minds in the .gov are apparently some of the last people to figure out how the internet really works. DefDist’s CAD files are still available here.
Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed says he’s “looking forward to jail“. Frankly, once the info is out, and it is, there’s nothing that the government can do about it.
A friend of the blog sent this news story a few days back – from the UK Register:
Plans for fully 3D-printed gun go online next week
The Liberator pistol causes political panic
Defense Distributed, the pending non-profit that plans to make 3D-printed weaponry available for anyone with such a printer, will release the blueprints for a fully-working plastic firearm next week.
The UK Register is pretty open about their bias in the story, which they at least try to make funny, but it’s on the level of McNugget jokes. But they do point out that Democrats have never seen anything they don’t wish to control.
“Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” said Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) in a statement.
“When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago,” Israel said, “I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.”
HotAir today has a story citing that ol’ Chuck Schumer, who’s never met a ban he didn’t like, and demands total control over you groveling peasants who need to kneel before his Ruling Class dictatorial power – because it’s what’s good for you – also wants to ban it.
Should we light our hair on fire about plastic guns made with 3D printers?
Too late for Senator Charles Schumer. The combustible New York Democrat is encouraging hysteria over the prospect of criminals using 3D printers to manufacture firearms, possibly to assassinate the president. “We’re facing a situation where anyone—a felon, a terrorist—can open a gun factory in their garage ,and the weapons they make will be undetectable,” Schumer said. “It’s stomach-churning.”
Bloomberg’s own people don’t care about actual criminals, though:
…If you’ve got the skills, you can already make a gun in your basement, and there are less complicated ways to do it than using a $10,000 3D printer and computer set-up. Why would bad guys bother making comic book firearms when they can go online and order anything from a Glock 9 mm pistol to a Bushmaster military-style semiautomatic rifle with 30-round ammunition magazines?
Perhaps the evil doer wouldn’t want to leave a credit-card trail. Then he pays cash at a Main Street gun shop, a weekend gun show, or to the criminal down the block who sells black market firepower from the trunk of his car. Or the crook steals or borrows his gun.
Point being, ban real guns first. Get the “dangerous ones”, then ban all the rest.
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The plastic Liberator pistol is a very interesting thing, and not just in its mechanics.
Perhaps the most interesting is what’s in the name. A Russian professor of mine that taught Chekhov explained that Chekhov’s names always were indicative of the character; and names are often very, very important. Going a very long way back in history, true names were a method to power over someone – either due to knowing someone and being able to identify them in a time before pictures, or out of a very early belief in names as a form of magic. Here, too, in a very fascinating way, the name was chosen for a reason, and is very indicative of what this pistol really represents.
Here with the plastic Liberator, we have all that liberty and liberation connotates, that this will free the information and free the people to have the tools to arm themselves against tyranny. We also have its historical antecedent, the FP-45 Liberator pistol:
It was made on the cheap, and made to be distributed to resistance fighters.
It had abysmal accuracy, but the purpose of the pistol was very specific.
It was made to shoot occupying forces up close and personal. It was made to shoot Nazi dictator thugs at extreme close range.
Cyberculture icon Stewart Brand’s famous notion that “information wants to be free” has been an almost ubiquitous refrain ever since utopian-minded hackers began populating computer networks in the 1980s. Today, 3D printing has given the phrase a whole new meaning, allowing raw data to become real world weapons with the click of a button. Cody R. Wilson, the antagonistic founder of Defense Distributed, is taking that idea to its logical — and hugely controversial — extreme.
Except it’s not an extreme at all…
(DefCad’s) his reasoning, he claims, isn’t really about the Second Amendment at all — it’s about technological progress rendering the very concept of gun control meaningless.
“It’s more radical for us,” he told Motherboard in “Click Print Gun,” a recent mini-doc about the dark side of the 3D printing revolution. “There are people all over the world downloading our files and we say ‘good.’ We say you should have access to this. You simply should.”
If this all sounds very similar to the good gospel spread by Brand and advanced by progressives and activists like the late Aaron Swartz, you’re hearing it right. But even without the context of Wilson’s operation, firearms and freedom of information share a strangely similar history, an oft-overlooked ideological confluence between hackers and gun advocates that seems to be gaining momentum.
Except it’s not extreme at all, as guns existed well before computers…
If you go back before 1934, there were no restrictions on guns except if you were black or another wrong color/status. There were restrictions on people, and that’s what was understood. Guns aren’t dangerous, criminals are dangerous because they don’t restrict themselves to any laws or social mores. Guns weren’t dangerous to the people in power, freed black former slaves with guns were dangerous, because guns are tools of power. Today, as then, it’s not the guns that are dangerous – Schumer and his ilk are surrounded by security with guns and send their kids to schools with guns and will come after you with guns – it’s you being armed that’s dangerous to his power. Guns are just a tool, as they always have been.
The next leftist dictator-tyrant argument is then to control ammo and powder, which has a few major flaws. Namely, their enforcers use them, and their enforcers provide criminals with guns and ammo, so the criminal argument goes right out the window. Of course it isn’t about criminals, it’s about making you into a criminal so they can tell you how to live and make you live the right way. It’s never about the guns, it’s about the control. Components to make ammunition aren’t impossible to come by, and conventional ammunition is only needed once – until an armed instrument of the state has his tools liberated.
The entire concept of homemade guns isn’t extreme. Going back a few decades, not only could you buy a machinegun by mail, no matter who you were, but you could build whatever you liked. There was a great heyday of gun manufacturing in the early 20th century before regulations started becoming overwhelming. John Moses Browning was designing his greatest works in the early 20th Century – from pistols to machineguns, many of which are still in use today. Consider that the M2 heavy machine gun is something that’s been in service for nearly 100 years. It’s not that there aren’t more designers for weapons with better ideas, it’s that government regulations have limited the marketplace and made it more difficult to experiment. Government has stalled technological development – developments that used to be made in mechanic shops when designers and engineers and skilled craftsmen got together and designed new tools.
There were virtually no regulations or restrictions on firearms for a hundred years or more, with the exception of those laws meant to target blacks, American Indians, and other specific groups that the majority wanted to oppress; and a few local laws.
Defense Distributed to some degree is just bringing things back to how they were for generations. Before, the government trusted citizens and so it didn’t restrict citizens, soon, the government simply won’t be able to restrict citizens; and if they do restrict enough, there will be tools of liberation available.
Twenty-nine percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution might be necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties, according to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
That’s somewhat substantial.
The survey asked whether respondents agreed, disagreed, neither agreed nor disagreed or did not know or refused to respond to the statement: “In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties“
Pretty clear statement.
Results of the poll show that those who believe a revolution might be necessary differ greatly along party lines:
The Fort Collins company, which makes sights, recoil pads and other accessories, started in 1996. But like Magpul Industries Inc. of Boulder County, HiViz said it’s not happy with the gun control measures approved by the Colorado Legislature and signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper. Magpul Industries announced last month it will be leaving Colorado.
Pass anti-gun bills, expect gun companies to leave. Leftists are happy with this, but that’s because there’s still someone making guns for their enforcers, and other than that, they want to destroy all gun companies. They will find that their enforcers will be denied a lot of tools now, though.
“I make this announcement with mixed emotions,” Phillip Howe, president and CEO of HiViz, said in a statement. “Colorado is a beautiful state with great people, but we cannot in clear conscience support with our taxes a state that has proven through recent legislation a willingness to infringe upon the constitutional rights of our customer base.”
HiViz gets it. And they’ll be keeping their customer base by supporting them.
This is not a question of American citizens’ rights, this is a question of the US government purposely arming narcoterrorists in order to have this talking point, claiming the 90% lie over and over.
I can’t think of many things more insulting or downright foul to hear from our President other than his own crimes being blamed on our rights – as was intended. He is now going international with the demand that our rights go away because he committed crimes… to deny us those rights.
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This is like a rapist saying “not only did she deserve it when I did it to her, but that proves my point, we have to keep the world safe from women like her who cause rape”.
