Range Day is the Monday prior to the Show’s opening when manufacturers demonstrate their wares. People like me are bussed out to handle the goodies. This year, Range Day sounded like the Battle of Dak To, or perhaps Fallujah, with the distinctive pop-pop-pop of full-auto fire, which was extremely popular amongst all the SEAL wannabes. Indeed, this was symbolic of the whole show, which has now become so heavily militarized that you have to look fairly hard for something designed to kill animals instead of people.
Why do people like machine guns? Because they are fun. I mean, I get it to some degree: after you’ve been into guns and shooting for a while, everything that’s new is old again, or derp. I wish I had gone to SHOT back at the beginning of my blogging career, because now all the new stuff out there makes me go, “meh.” But I still smile when I get to shoot machine guns.
And “designed to kill animals instead of people” sounds like something straight out the anti-gun playbook. I’m sure it will be news to high-power shooters, or 3-gun shooters, that their tools of the trade are “designed to kill people.” Every gun is designed to kill people if you put one in the hands of someone interested in that. Remember, that’s not a deer rifle you have in your closet or safe, that’s a high-precision long range sniper rifle. A real man killer. So careful adopting the rhetoric of our opponents, Mr. Petzal.
If someone’s Virginia permit is revoked, they can’t use another state’s permit to continue to carry in Virginia. OK, fair enough. I’m not going to sweat that.
State Police will be made available at gun shows to run background checks. The checks will be voluntary, not mandatory, so fine by me.
Anyone subject to a permanent protective order (PPO) is barred from carrying for two years the order remains in effect. By federal law someone with a PPO can’t have a gun anyway, so I don’t see what the issue is here.
It makes me wonder if holding reciprocity hostage in an effort to get concessions was the plan all along, but McAuliffe didn’t get much of anything here in return, so I suspect they were made to feel their move on reciprocity was… ill considered. I don’t think the plan was to hold reciprocity hostage to get concessions, I think they realized they made a major political miscalculation and McAuliffe was looking for a face saving way out.
If you’re a Virginia gun owner, and were part of the noisemaking operation down there, pat yourself on the back, your governor and attorney general just blinked. They always underestimate us.
It’s not clear yet all the details, and there’s a lot of conflicting stories, but it would appear the feds have arrested the leaders of the occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, killing one in the process, after the man charged police, or was peacefully surrendering, with his hands up, depending on whose story you believe. I hope there is dash cam footage so the truth can be ascertained. The feds need to be very careful about the remaining protesters.
In Pennsylvania, there have traditionally been a lot of extralegal requirements for Licenses to Carry Firearms (LTCF) implemented by county Sheriffs, with the City of Philadelphia being the most notorious of the offender. The rest of the ring counties were often pretty non compliant as well. Bucks County had a number of extralegal requirements. I want to say there was a psychological evaluation (or something pretty draconian like that) imposed at one point (this is before I lived here), until a local activist challenged the requirement. Up until pretty recently, the county was overcharging for LTCFs. Bucks County is now following the law. Delaware County used to illegally call references, including employers, until it was pointed out to them that disclosing information about an LTCF application crime, and my understanding is that they no longer do this. Montgomery County has continued with extralegal requirement to get local police sign-off, but now it seems that may be at an end too.
The right to defend life and limb, and to have access to effective tools for doing so is not an American right, it is a human right. I would argue it is perhaps the most basic human right there is. It is a shame there are so many countries in the world that don’t recognize and protect it.
Gun news is actually getting kind of scarce out there. I do not wish that to change. I have learned my lesson in regards to “careful what you wish for.” I do have enough to do a good tab clearing.
If I were Republican lawmakers in the area, I’d start to look into Comcast’s monopolistic practices. I’m thinking they might need a few more regulations. If they want to run their company in a partisan manner, they are free too. We should also regulate them in a partisan manner, in that instance.
I cut the cord years ago, and I’m glad I’m no longer forking over more than a hundred bucks a month for their shitty product. I get that for a lot of people, there’s no other choice for high-speed Internet, but if you can swing it, cut the cord! Stop giving money to a partisan hack of a company everyone hates and who frankly hates you too.
Records obtained by ATF show the suspect has bought 531 guns from Gander Mountain from 2003 to 2015, spending nearly $170,000 on the guns; 513 of the guns were used. Some 428 of the guns were purchased from 2010 to early 2015, records show.
I’ll admit, that’s quite a volume, but there are plenty of collectors out there who have huge collections and trade up frequently. This guy is 60 years old. He’s got a C&R FFL which means he’s cleared a background check. In all respects he’s probably not a threat to anyone.
The ATF agents found he had 487 transactions for guns and accessories through a website called Gunbroker. The site is an online auction for gun sales. It is unclear from the search warrant if there were background checks performed on the sales made.
Not looking good. All it takes is a few transactions, and if they can show profit:
According to the search warrant, ATF agents found several circumstances where the suspect sold guns through Gunbroker, making a profit from $69 to $380 per gun. Records from Gander Mountain and Gunbroker show the suspect sold four guns in a one-week period in December 2014, earning $673 in profits.
Yeah, he’s probably screwed. There is a fine line between collectors trading a large volume of their collection up for better specimens and someone dealing in firearms without a license. All they have to show is that he was consistently making a profit, and devoting serious time an attention to the endeavor, and that’s pretty much all it’s going to take to get a conviction.
Is public safety really going to be enhanced by this 60 year old man rotting in federal prison for quite possibly the rest of his natural life? He’s looking at up to ten years if convicted. I have my doubts. The big problem I’ve always had with gun laws is there are only felonies, and pretty serious ones. Most ordinarily law-abiding people would be dissuaded by a misdemeanor rap, and people selling guns to criminals aren’t going to be dissuaded by a felony rap, because they probably already have a few.
Remember, when you say “enforce the laws already on the books” this is what that means.
As Swanson and his colleagues see it, gun ownership restrictions related to mental health are too broad and too narrow all at once. They capture a lot of people because of some contact with the courts or health care system, in some cases minor or a long time ago, who are actually at low risk of perpetrating gun violence. At the same time, they miss people who have yet to be diagnosed, adjudicated mentally ill or involuntarily committed, including people who are suicidal or have pathological anger, he said.
However much of what they propose I would find more unacceptable than the current status quo. For instance, I am steadfastly against restricting firearms because some people might commit suicide with them, something the article suggests would be a positive thing.
We’ve seen the gun control movement in recent years switch from an emphasis on crime to an emphasis on suicide, probably because crime has dropped to record low levels, and to be frank you can fundraise more easily from suicide victims. As the article notes:
Some observers say that talking more about suicides will change the focus of the gun control debate, in part by bringing a new demographic of victims into the discussion. Where often the victims of firearm-related homicide are young black or Hispanic males, nearly 80% of those who use guns to take their own lives are white men, according to the CDC.
Our empirical analysis suggest that firearms regulations which function to reduce overall gun availability have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide, while regulations that seek to prohibit high risk individuals from owning firearms have a lesser effect.
Restricting access to lethal means has been identified as an effective approach to suicide prevention, and firearms regulations are one way to reduce gun availability.
No regulation of this kind, intended solely to discourage the exercise of an enumerated right, should ever be constitutional. I’m also just philosophically opposed to restricting access to dangerous objects because someone might kill themselves with it. That leads to a society that enfeebles it’s citizens, keeping them in a child-like state where dangerous things have to be kept from them by their parental figures (government) for their own good. Such a society may be regarded as kind, but it is not a free society.
