This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists

  • WaPo: Gun laws kills

    The Washington Post, which is clearly anti-gun given all of the pointless propaganda they publish on a daily basis, targets gun laws in a hastily-written piece on their pages today;

    Arizona gun laws, which have been criticized by gun-control groups, permit any law-abiding resident older than 18 to buy or possess a firearm. Federal law requires anyone buying a handgun, as opposed to a rifle or shotgun, to be at least 21.

    Arizona laws were relaxed even further last year when Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed a National Rifle Association-backed bill repealing a state law requiring gun owners to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. State law now permits anyone 21 years or older and legally qualified to own a firearm to carry the weapon without a concealed-to-carry permit.

    Brewer’s predecessor, Janet Napolitano, now secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had previously vetoed attempts

    They make it sound like a crime that law-abiding citizens over 21 are allowed to buy handguns in Arizone, don’t they? In fact, Jared Loughner was a law abiding citizen when he purchased the gun, too. I found a two-year-old ticket for running a stop sign and some dropped charges in another case. That’s pretty close to law-abiding isn’t it?

    Of course, what everyone has their balls in an uproar over are his community college refusal to let him back on campus before he gets a mental evaluation. Do you seriously want what some community college thinks of your mental state in your police records? If he’d done something that threatened others, they should have charged him. But some nebulous order for an evaluation – it’s their fault that it wasn’t in his records.

    I’m not arguing that Loughner should have had a gun, I’m arguing that no one put anything in his records to prevent him from getting a gun. Everyone makes it sound like something should have been put in his records, yet there’s nothing there.

    In another WaPo article, drunk-ass Jim Moran beclowns himself with fake conversations he had with Congresswoman Giffords before the shooting.

    “Gabby did tell me that she was concerned,” Moran said, using Giffords’s nickname. “She did say it’s really bad out there, particularly in a district like [hers]. She was very much troubled that Sarah Palin put her in the crosshairs.”

    Moran said Giffords explained that, unlike in his Northern Virginia district, “a substantial percentage” of her district was “anti-government and pro-gun” – a potentially dangerous mix.

    Nice one, Moran. i get the sense he’s whistling past the graveyard thinking Arizona isn’t like his constituency. There are more “anti-government and pro-gun” people in Northern Virginia than he knows. I know more than a few who open-carry their large caliber handguns in VA.

  • WaPo’s admiration for Mexican gun sales

    I’ve written twice about the Washington Post’s series of articles on gun dealers in the US. In October, they wrote about gun dealers in the DC area and earlier this month about guns that make their way to Mexico. In each article, the reader can just feel that there’s another shoe to drop on the subject.

    Well, the shoe dropped today when the Washington Post wrote about Mexico’s only gun shop;

    To go shopping for a gun in Mexico, customers must come to Mexico City – even if they live 1,300 miles away in Ciudad Juarez. To gain entry to the store, which is on a secure military base, customers must present valid identification, pass through a metal detector, yield to the security wand and surrender cellphones and cameras.

    To buy a gun, clients must submit references and prove that their income is honestly earned, that their record is free of criminal charges and that their military obligations, if any, have been fulfilled with honor. They are fingerprinted and photographed. Finally, if judged worthy of owning a small-caliber weapon to protect home and hearth, they are allowed to buy just one. And a box of bullets.

    Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, a matter of pride for the nation’s citizens.

    Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Mexican citizens are proud that they have to be treated like a criminal until they prove themselves innocent to buy a single gun. I’m pretty sure that they don’t get to pick the gun they buy either.

    So now we get a glimpse of the gun control we can have if the regulations are suited for the Washington Post.

    More than 6,600 federally licensed firearm dealers operate on the U.S. side of the border. At least 14 million guns are thought to have been sold in the United States last year, according to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But no one knows the exact number.

    Cryin’-ass shame ain’t it?

    Members of the military, police and security firms are exempt from the handgun-control law that applies to the general public. If a business owner wants a gun to protect his cantina or muffler shop, he can apply for a permit. A different permit is required to transport the weapon from one place to another. The paperwork for the latter takes a couple of weeks.

    “In most cases, we suggest hiring a private security company, and, to refrain from the use of a weapon, we invite people to use other security mechanisms,” Manzano said

    Yeah, having all of the guns in the hands of the police and military has worked out so well for the Mexicans hasn’t it? Now, only civilians are getting gunned down along the frontier with the US – the unarmed public bears the brunt of the drug war.

  • Christie frees man in gun case

    I read the story a few months ago and I’ve been waiting for it to play out. Brian Aitken was arrested in Burlington, NJ for transporting handguns through the State although he was in compliance with Federal regulations regarding moving from one state to another;

    Aitken claimed he was protected under a state exemption because he was moving from Mount Laurel to Hoboken at the time. A Burlington County judge refused to allow the jury to see the exemptions, claiming Aitken’s defense team did not present enough evidence during the trial to show he was moving.

    Convicted in August, Aitken was pardoned yesterday by Governor Christie;

    Christie signed a letter ordering Brian Aitken, a New Jersey man sentenced to seven years in jail for having weapons he legally purchased in Colorado, to be released from Mid-State Correctional Facility as soon as possible.

    It’s about time there is a pro-gun advocate governor in the northeast.

    Thanks to Jeff for the link.

  • US guns vacationing in Mexico

    ROS sent us a link to a series in the Washington Post, “The Hidden Life of Guns” that I’ve been following the last few months about US guns purchased legally from gun shops ending up in the Mexican drug wars and nationwide crimes. I’ll admit that the Post did a lot of work uncovering the trails of gun ownership, but it’s all just wheel-spinning.

    Their articles all begin the same way – ominous hints at some nefarious activity by legal gun dealers, tons of firearms making their way to the drug gangs that all lead to the same conclusion. The gun dealers were following all of the laws and doing their due diligence in gun transfers. For example;

    Carter, 76, has operated four Carter’s Country stores in the Houston metropolitan area over the past half-century. In the past two years, more than 115 guns from his stores have been seized by the police and military in Mexico.

    And as you read further into the story;

    A high number of traces does not necessarily signal wrongdoing. It could be the result of sales volume, geography or clientele. Carter’s Country, for instance, is the largest independent gun retailer in the region. Most experts and ATF officials agree that the majority of dealers are law-abiding.

    So, the only conclusion a reader can arrive at is that gun laws need to be tightened. Only a few of the gun dealers who the Post profiles are accused of actual wrong-doing, so like I said, the Post is making the point that laws need to be changed. But, if a gun dealer sells a gun to a qualified buyer, what could possibly be changed? The gun dealer would have to shadow every purchaser to make sure that he doesn’t transfer ownership to an unqualified buyer, wouldn’t he?

    I’m sure the Post would just rather end gun sales and disarm us all, because that has worked so well every where it’s tried. Washington, DC, Detroit, Chicago, the UK, Canada.

    Just wishing guns away doesn’t work.

    Every once in a while, the DC police will have a gun buy-back program and more than thirty years after their hand gun ban, they’ll still collect a couple of thousand guns.

    The Post is committing journalistic jackassery. I don’t think the national Democrats are foolish enough to try to take our guns – but they’re welcome to try.

  • Anti-gun WaPo targets legal gun dealer

    While making preparations to spend the day at the range with own handguns, I ran into a Washington Post article in which they try to shame a legal gun dealer in Prince George County, Maryland out of business. The title of the article is “Realco guns tied to 2500 crimes in DC and Maryland” written by David Fallis.

    Fallis argues that because Realco, the gun dealer, has been linked to so many gun crimes in the Metro DC Area, it must be doing something wrong. The issue here is “straw purchases” – one buyer who can pass the background check buys a gun and then sells it to someone who can’t pass a background check;

    Glenn Ivey said that after he became Prince George’s state’s attorney in 2002, he asked law enforcement colleagues if he could do anything about the flow of guns from Realco, which he said he knew of from his time in the 1990s as a prosecutor in the District.

    “I had an eye toward trying to take action,” Ivey said. “The feedback we got was: They are doing it the way they are supposed to. They are following the letter of the law.”

    Asked about Realco, ATF spokeswoman Clare Weber said stores with greater numbers of traces are inspected more frequently.

    “The number of traces that come back to a [gun dealer] is not a revocable offense if the dealer is found in compliance with record-keeping requirements,” she said.

    Prince George County is a high-crime area which borders on DC’s notorious Southeast neighborhood. Criminals routine cross back and forth across the DC-MD boundary. Crime, of course, follows them. In fact, Martin O’Malley, the incumbent governor of Maryland, brags that he’s reduced crime in Maryland, when all he’s done is chase it back to DC. Four years ago, DC’s Police Chief Ramsey bragged that he had reduced crime in DC when all he had accomplished was chasing criminals to Prince George County.

    Obviously, the county needs a gun store for law abiding citizens to purchase protection from the scores of criminals, so closing it is not a rational option…well, except to the Washington Post which really doesn’t care about PG County’s residents.

    If there’s a high crime rate, and an elevated number of criminals, it makes sense that there would be some illegal purchases. So prosecute the folks who resell their guns to criminals – not the gun store owners who are following the law.

    Of course, the Washington Post advocates closing the store for no other reason than it’s in a bad neighborhood. It’s not the gun store’s fault that the gun is resold.

    [August, 2007], prosecutor Ivey joined Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition and others outside Realco in a “protest against illegal guns.” Inside the shop, Maryland State Police pored over Realco’s paperwork. Investigators found little of concern.

    Yeah, marching with the Rainbow/PUSH coalition really elevates the prosecutor’s character in my estimation. His motivations are more about politics than about concern for the law abiding citizens. He should be protesting outside the homes of straw buyers if he wants to make a valid statement.

    Drag the right wingnuts into it;

    In a May 2006 straw purchase, a man bought a handgun at Realco for a felon friend who wanted to shoot abortion doctors. The plot was foiled after the felon’s family called authorities weeks later.

    Criminals are criminals. Throw them both in jail, just quit dragging the rest of into it.

    Once out, [Erik Dixon] met Cathy R. Anderson, 31, and soon asked that she buy a gun for him. In January 2007, the pair visited Realco, where she made a down payment on a Glock .45, signing a form saying she was buying the gun for herself. Dixon was in the store with her, she later told police.

    She told investigators she didn’t know of his criminal past. She said she never touched the gun after she picked it up on a return trip to Realco.

    “I took it back to Erik’s truck and gave it to him,” she told police.

    And yet she’s still walking around’

    “That was then; this is now,” she said. “. . . I’m sorry for what happened.”

    OK, well, ‘sorry’ makes it all better.

  • Judge: WI’s CCW ban is unconstitutional

    For those of you in Wisconsin who miss your right to carry a concealed firearm may get some justice if Jon Counsell, a Clark County judge has a say (Wisconsin Radio Network link);

    “The government has to have a compelling state interest to do so (restrict the right to carry) and they have to have the least restrictive means of doing that,” said Poss. “Public safety obviously is a state interest, but there’s all kinds of ways to do that in this regard.” In his decision, Counsell states the law forces citizens to “go unarmed (thus not able to act in self defense), violate the law or carry openly,” but notes displaying weapon’s openly isn’t a “realistic alternative.”

    From WEAU.com, this from the defendant’s lawyer;

    “Like many of my counterparts, I believe strongly in the Constitution. And as Ronald Reagan once said ‘it’s not a buffet.’ The Bill of Rights is not a buffet where you can pick and choose, where some people say they want the First Amendment applied to everyone, but somehow they jump over the Second Amendment,” [assistant state public defender, Bill] Poss says.

    The Left has chipped away at our rights over the last seventy years, and now we can use their same tactics to chip away at their legislation.

  • Me love WV

    Yes, I’ve enjoyed my life in West Virginia. My state income tax withholding dropped $150/month just by moving across the Potomac River. Registration, insurance and licensing for our driving privileges have all dropped substantially – by hundreds of dollars per year. My property taxes are a percentage of what you’re paying.

    But here’s the frosting on the cake. I walked into a local gun shop the other day and walked out with my new Rock Island Arsenal M1911 a half hour later – the first time I’ve owned a handgun since I moved to DC (where I really needed it). Later today I’m applying for my CCL, but in the meantime, I’ll have to be content to open carry the .45 caliber semi-auto pistol.

    Funny how little need there is, however, to carry a hand gun in a State where everyone carries a gun. I’m just stepping up to carry my weight.

  • Democrats cheer gun ruling (for now)

    Kasie Hunt writes at Politico that the Democrats are pleased that the Supreme Court ruled as it did in McDonald v. Chicago because it removes guns as an issue in the next election;

    “It removes guns as a political issue because everyone now agrees that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and everybody agrees that it’s subject to regulation,” said Lanae Erickson, deputy director of the culture program at centrist think tank Third Way.

    A House Democratic aide agreed that the court’s decision removed a potentially combustible element from the mix.

    “The Supreme Court ruled here that you have a fundamental right to own and bear arms, and that means at the national level it’s harder — whether it’s Republicans or whether it’s the [National Rifle Association] — to throw that claim out: If Democrats are in charge. they’re going to come get your guns,” said the aide. “It pretty much took that off the table.”

    That message seems to have filtered down to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in her confirmation hearing to day. When asked by Dianne Feinstein about yesterday’s decision, Kagan responded (Fox News link);

    “Senator Feinstein, because the court decided them as they did — and once the court has decided a case, it is binding precedent,” Kagan answered.

    The nominee said that unless the circumstances that led to a decision change or some other significant grounds can be found to challenge, “the operating presumption of our legal system is that a judge respects precedent. … You assume that it’s right and that it’s valid going forward.”

    Notice she added that “unless circumstances change” proviso. What could change circumstances? Democrats could get a big hard-on for guns and write new law. So nothing has really changed – Democrats can smile nicely at you and stroke your revolver until Fall. Their attitude towards guns certainly didn’t change over night with the Supreme Court decision.

    Harry Reid wrote;

    “I am pleased that the high court has taken steps in both the Heller and McDonald cases to guarantee this fundamental right,” he said in a prepared statement, referring to both the 2008 Heller decision, which struck down the District of Columbia’s restrictive gun law, and Monday’s McDonald v. Chicago decision against Chicago’s handgun ban.

    Only because guns have beating the living shit out of Democrats for more than a decade. But give them 61 votes in the Senate and watch it all change.