Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists

The Washington Post‘s editorial board is back to advocating for gun confiscation in light of the shootings in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Kansas in the last two weeks. They can’t get it through their thick skulls that, at this point in our history, gun safety starts at the prosecutorial level and not at the legislative level;

[T]he National Rifle Association demanded on Twitter that we tell them what law would have prevented the Kalamazoo shooting. The gun lobby cannot fall back on that lame argument in the Kansas case. If Mr. Ford’s weapons had been confiscated when he was served with a protection order, or if he had been unable to obtain the assault rifle he toted around, he might have killed fewer people.

In other words, the Kansas shooter, who was a felon and was forbidden by current federal and state laws to possess a firearm should have had his weapons confiscated because of a protection order. I agree, but, who knew that he was already in possession of an illegally obtained weapon in order to confiscate the gun? His baby-momma bought the weapon and illegally gave it to him, after she had already attested to the fact that wasn’t her intention at the point of sale when she signed the federal document which asked her the question if that was her intention, and then she put her signature to the piece of paper. So that’s two gun control regulations which were broken before the shootings occurred.

And, oh, by the way, he was served the order of protection at work. He didn’t have the weapons with him at the time because he left the job to get the weapons and returned to begin shooting. So how was the officer who served him supposed to confiscate a gun that wasn’t at the scene of the service, a gun that he shouldn’t have owned, by law, anyway?

Yet focusing on individual cases misses the point. The point is not that one rule change — or even several — will stop every instance of gun violence; it is that we are a country saturated with firearms. When guns are so easily available to so many people under such loose restrictions, more people die.

And there it is. It’s not that criminals are able to obtain firearms – there are laws in place to prevent that – it’s that so many Americans privately own firearms, that’s what has the Washington Post’s editorial board’s panties in a wad. The only people who claim that firearms are “easily available to many people” are people who have never purchased a firearm. if we’re so “saturated with firearms”, it’s wonder that the death toll from guns isn’t much, much higher, because the Washington Post’s editorial board thinks we’re all so irresponsible that we’re all out every day blasting away at anything that moves. The fact remains that there are millions of responsible gun owners who don’t kill anyone every day.

What makes the United States different [from other countries] is the huge number of guns in circulation — nearly one firearm for every person in the country — along with a strong pro-gun lobby that prevents seemingly any popular, common-sense gun restriction from passing on the federal level, where such restrictions could have maximum effectiveness.

See, confiscation from every American gun owner is the only answer. Then we can be like Europe, where only criminals and terrorists have guns and citizens are defenseless.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Ex-PH2 sends us a link to the Chicago Tribune which reports that Freedom Group, the North Carolina company that makes the Bushmaster scary-looking rifle that the shooter used to kill 20 children and six adults in Connecticut asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit against their company that the victims’ families filed against them charging the company with the responsibility for those deaths.

Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the victims’ families, said their lawsuit is believed to be the first to be filed under an exception listed in the federal law that allows litigation against companies that know, or should know, that their weapons are likely to be used in a way that risks injury to others. The families are seeking unspecified monetary damages and hope the lawsuit persuades gun companies to not sell AR-15s to the public.

“This is an instrument of war designed for the battlefield that is marketed and sold to the general public,” said Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed in the massacre. “We’re just asking for accountability.”

The shooter killed his mother – the person who bought the weapon legally – and stole it from her. So somehow, the manufacturer is responsible for the way the firearm was acquired, too. Maybe they should sue the manufacturer of the firearm that the shooter used to kill his own mother. I’d remind my readers that the gun laws in Connecticut prevented the shooter from buying his own gun legally, so the response of the victims is to write more gun laws that would prevent law abiding citizens from owning guns. And a couple of million dollars in a settlement agreement probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

This fellow, Matthew Hess, has published an opinion piece in the Marine Corps Times urging veterans to get behind more gun control. Hess claims to be a former Marine Sergeant who is now a freshman attending Columbia University in New York City. He says that we should get behind the President’s latest round of executive orders and even go as far as supporting a new assault weapon ban, whatever an assault weapon is.

Most of us agree that we have a gun violence problem in the United States. There is no simple answer to this problem, and we cannot afford to pretend it is only a mental health issue, just as we cannot pretend it is only a gun law issue. But we can start by making it more difficult for criminals to obtain guns by requiring background checks on all gun purchases. We should be willing to at least consider other forms of gun control, such as prohibitions on military-grade assault rifles, like those used in San Bernardino. I support my friends in their desire to protect themselves and their loved ones, but I do not trust every person in America to own a gun. Veterans — with their weapons experience and training — have a responsibility to lead the fight for more secure gun laws.

Well, you know, if supporting the President’s edicts would stop criminals from getting guns, if strengthening background checks limited criminals’ access to firearms, if banning scary-looking black guns would reduce crime in this country, maybe I could get behind it. But, the truth is that it’s all smoke and mirrors. Scary-looking black guns are already banned in California, yet the San Bernadino shooting still happened. Criminals will still deal in firearms in darkened alleys and parking lots. It’s really just one more step in the journey to ban all guns. When these measures don’t do anything to quell gun violence, the argument will be that nothing short of a complete gun ban will work.

And, oh, by the way, sergeant, it’s not up to veterans to decide who gets trusted with guns and who doesn’t. The Fourth Amendment says that no one gets to lose their rights without due process. An opinion that you don’t trust “every person in America to own a gun”, really doesn’t matter. I’ll be the first to admit that there are indeed irresponsible gun owners out there, there are also irresponsible automobile drivers, irresponsible drinkers, irresponsible pedestrians. At some point, we have to start accepting that gun violence is a result of people behaving badly. Veterans are already saying that, out loud and in public. Haven’t you noticed?

Yesterday, in his emotional and tearful press conference, President Obama made the claim that; “The problem is some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.” Yeah, it’s an outright lie, as many of us who have made purchases of handguns and long guns from the internet can tell you. I’ve bought several guns from auction sites and from electronic store fronts on the internet and every time I went through the NICS background checks before I was allowed to take possession of my firearm.

Apparently, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker, was inundated with emails after the President made the statement. Kessler grudgingly gave the President two Pinocchios;

Administration officials say his point was that electronic commerce has made it easier for prohibited people such as felons to obtain firearms (or to hide such transactions from scrutiny behind the dark Web). Put in those terms, his statement is reasonable. Illegal markets often exploit new forms of commerce.

But many readers believed Obama was asserting the rules were different for the Internet — that it legally permitted violent felons to obtain guns.

We agree that Obama’s language is slippery and could be confusing to the average person who doesn’t know anything about FFLs and interstate requirements. There is nothing unique about the Internet; the laws governing private transactions and interstate sales are exactly the same. It’s the same as offering to sell a gun on a bulletin board, except the bulletin board is significantly larger. The Internet, and eletronic payment systems such as PayPal and Bitcoin, have certainly facilitated transactions that in the past would have been more difficult to arrange.

Obama erred in saying the rules are different for Internet sellers. They face the same rules as other sellers — rules that the administration now says it will enforce better.

If the both the seller and the buyer are criminals, the transfers of the ownership of illegal guns on the internet will continue as it did before the President’s little crying jag yesterday, just like those car trunk sales in dark alleys and parking lots will continue between people who don’t care about following the law. Yeah, I bought scary black guns on the internet and at gun shows, but as I said. I went through the NICS background checks as i would at a gun dealer’s check out counter.

The President lied and the Washington Post should have admitted that it was an outright attempt at deceiving the American public. Instead they pretty much called it a “little white lie” when indeed it was a “whopper”. The President’s language wasn’t “slippery”, it was a lie. Those tears were a lie, too.