Monday, September 19, 2016
Insight
The New York Times had a hissy fit over the Missouri state legislature's passing a law creating a system of concealed carry that we gun nuts call "Constitutional Carry" that is, you don't need to obtain the permission of the government to exercise your God-given right to defend your life by utilizing your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. I think Missouri is about the 10th state to do this. Vermont has always been Constitutional carry and it's not actually a blood bath up there. But the NYT editorial board begs to differ with reality. The editorial really does shine a light on the warped thinking of the liberal elite. Behold the start.
How about we call it a Civil Rights victory, since we're dealing with an inalienable right actually mentioned in the Constitution as amended? And the phrase "a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state" is fantastic hyperbole. The left always greets relaxed restrictions on concealed carry permits as the beginning of an ever increasing number of daily gunfights by law abiding gun carriers and it never happens. Never. The removal of having to get permission to enjoy an inalienable right is the right thing to do. We trust the citizens without criminal records or other disqualifiers to keep and bear arms, so why do we need permission to keep and bear arms under a layer of clothing? It makes no sense to us basket dwelling deplorables for the extra bureaucracy based solely on veiling cloth or leather. They NYT editorial board knows better, of course, but rather than support their concern with facts they start to lie.
This sentence is chock full of legal ignorance. Your right to defend yourself, that is, your inalienable right to life, always allows you to shoot people if they are threatening you with imminent death or serious bodily injury. That threat which you perceive must be reasonable. That's the basic crux of all states' self defense law. Some states require you to retreat to safety if you can safely do so. Other states don't require a retreat, probably because the decision whether you can turn and run safely is so difficult. The 'stand your ground' states have decided that it is unreasonable to apply this extra decision to people actually aware they are about to get hurt or killed by someone else. Stand your ground does not change the standard for righteous self defense and it makes it no more dangerous to other people who are not actually threatening you. Again this is the "coming bloodbath" irrational fear in different words.
I guess it would be helpful to know what sort of criminal record would have prevented a concealed carry permit for applicants under the old law. Non violent misdemeanors? DUI convictions? If you have a felony or a domestic violence record you can't even own a gun legally, much less carry it concealed around legally. This is a half-lie, and the authors again confused a concealed carry permit with legal ownership of a gun. If a citizen can legally own a gun now in Missouri, he or she doesn't have to get a permit to carry it under his or her clothes (or in a handbag). That's the only change. Prior to this law, a Missouri citizen who could legally own a gun could legally carry it in the open, unconcealed. So the only difference is where the righteous citizen can carry the firearm. Oh, the humanity! It's not that major a change, NYT. Chill out. And remember--federal law, Lautenberg Amendment, means domestic violence perpetrators can't even have a gun much less carry it around concealed. You can't piss on our backs and tell us it is raining, editors.
It's too stupid to quote, but the next paragraph calls the violent Mr. Brown in Ferguson, unarmed. Yeah, he was unarmed because the police officer shot him in the arm rather than let him have the police officer's gun. This was a righteous self-defense shooting as even the highly politicized DOJ has determined. So after the 'Hands up Don't shoot' gentle giant, who else could the NYT editors mention as an unarmed victim of a shooting? You guessed it. Trayvon Martin. But here again, the NYT lies stating, "in that case the judge's instructions to the jury contained the same language of the stand your ground law." Because Trayvon was on top of the white Hispanic raining down punches, there was no possibility of a safe retreat and there were no instructions in that case about stand your ground. None.
The NYT editors admit near the end of the article that background checks would still apply in Missouri. Duh, federal law does indeed apply, brainiacs. But then the editorial trots out the gun show loophole lie: "Unfortunately, there is a separate and busy uncontrolled market where buyers at gun shows and on the internet do not have to undergo background checks."
Wrong. People who sell guns for a living, federal firearm license holders, always have to use the background checks in order to sell a gun legally to anyone, and FFL holders sell about 98% of the guns at gun shows. You indeed can purchase a gun online without a background check, but unless you go pick up the gun yourself, the only way you can legally get it shipped to you is through a FFL holder who has to do the background check as I just stated. Buying online and then retrieving the purchased gun from the seller face to face is eerily similar to just going to the gun owner and buying it face to face. No one can legally sell any gun he or she owns to a person who cannot legally own a gun and again, that federal law applies in every state, even Missouri after it went with Constitutional Carry, as over 1/5th of the states have previously done with nary a detrimental result.
And as a reminder of how few times righteous private owners sell to people who cannot own guns, one needs only look at the statistics for federal prosecutions of violations of this law. In 2014, only a few hundred were prosecuted for such an illegal sale out of the tens of millions of sales made that year. Private sellers almost always follow the law, apparently.
In an alarming victory for the gun lobby, Missouri's Republican-controlled Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto and enact a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state.
How about we call it a Civil Rights victory, since we're dealing with an inalienable right actually mentioned in the Constitution as amended? And the phrase "a wholesale retreat from gun safety in the state" is fantastic hyperbole. The left always greets relaxed restrictions on concealed carry permits as the beginning of an ever increasing number of daily gunfights by law abiding gun carriers and it never happens. Never. The removal of having to get permission to enjoy an inalienable right is the right thing to do. We trust the citizens without criminal records or other disqualifiers to keep and bear arms, so why do we need permission to keep and bear arms under a layer of clothing? It makes no sense to us basket dwelling deplorables for the extra bureaucracy based solely on veiling cloth or leather. They NYT editorial board knows better, of course, but rather than support their concern with facts they start to lie.
The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training.Yes to the first and last, but unless the citizen made the gun he or she wants to carry concealed, that citizen, or the citizen who gave or sold the gun, has already passed the background check. As I've often pointed out, we trust our citizens responsibly to keep and bear arms and also to sell or give guns only to those who have not lost their Second Amendment rights through craziness or bad choices. It remains illegal in Missouri to give or sell a gun to someone who can't own one legally. Regarding weapons training, we all remember our required training to get a government license to exercise our First Amendment Rights, right?
It strips local law enforcement if its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high risk individuals.More lies; the Lautenberg Amendment still applies in Missouri and you can't have a gun at all if you've been found guilty of domestic violence or even if you only have received a restraining order by a significant other. The other high risk individuals, like crazy people and felons, still can't own a gun legally in Missouri. Does the NYT not know that there are federal laws applicable to all states regarding gun ownership and obtaining firearms?
And it establishes a dangerous "stand your ground" standard that will allow gun owners to shoot and claim self-defense based on their own sense of feeling threatened.
This sentence is chock full of legal ignorance. Your right to defend yourself, that is, your inalienable right to life, always allows you to shoot people if they are threatening you with imminent death or serious bodily injury. That threat which you perceive must be reasonable. That's the basic crux of all states' self defense law. Some states require you to retreat to safety if you can safely do so. Other states don't require a retreat, probably because the decision whether you can turn and run safely is so difficult. The 'stand your ground' states have decided that it is unreasonable to apply this extra decision to people actually aware they are about to get hurt or killed by someone else. Stand your ground does not change the standard for righteous self defense and it makes it no more dangerous to other people who are not actually threatening you. Again this is the "coming bloodbath" irrational fear in different words.
Mr. Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed the measure in June, saying it would allow individuals with a criminal record to legally carry a concealed weapon even though they had been, or would have been denied a permit under the old law's background check. [Democrat Mayors of St. Louis and Kansas City] warned against restricting the power of the local police to deny guns to those who commit domestic violence.
I guess it would be helpful to know what sort of criminal record would have prevented a concealed carry permit for applicants under the old law. Non violent misdemeanors? DUI convictions? If you have a felony or a domestic violence record you can't even own a gun legally, much less carry it concealed around legally. This is a half-lie, and the authors again confused a concealed carry permit with legal ownership of a gun. If a citizen can legally own a gun now in Missouri, he or she doesn't have to get a permit to carry it under his or her clothes (or in a handbag). That's the only change. Prior to this law, a Missouri citizen who could legally own a gun could legally carry it in the open, unconcealed. So the only difference is where the righteous citizen can carry the firearm. Oh, the humanity! It's not that major a change, NYT. Chill out. And remember--federal law, Lautenberg Amendment, means domestic violence perpetrators can't even have a gun much less carry it around concealed. You can't piss on our backs and tell us it is raining, editors.
It's too stupid to quote, but the next paragraph calls the violent Mr. Brown in Ferguson, unarmed. Yeah, he was unarmed because the police officer shot him in the arm rather than let him have the police officer's gun. This was a righteous self-defense shooting as even the highly politicized DOJ has determined. So after the 'Hands up Don't shoot' gentle giant, who else could the NYT editors mention as an unarmed victim of a shooting? You guessed it. Trayvon Martin. But here again, the NYT lies stating, "in that case the judge's instructions to the jury contained the same language of the stand your ground law." Because Trayvon was on top of the white Hispanic raining down punches, there was no possibility of a safe retreat and there were no instructions in that case about stand your ground. None.
The NYT editors admit near the end of the article that background checks would still apply in Missouri. Duh, federal law does indeed apply, brainiacs. But then the editorial trots out the gun show loophole lie: "Unfortunately, there is a separate and busy uncontrolled market where buyers at gun shows and on the internet do not have to undergo background checks."
Wrong. People who sell guns for a living, federal firearm license holders, always have to use the background checks in order to sell a gun legally to anyone, and FFL holders sell about 98% of the guns at gun shows. You indeed can purchase a gun online without a background check, but unless you go pick up the gun yourself, the only way you can legally get it shipped to you is through a FFL holder who has to do the background check as I just stated. Buying online and then retrieving the purchased gun from the seller face to face is eerily similar to just going to the gun owner and buying it face to face. No one can legally sell any gun he or she owns to a person who cannot legally own a gun and again, that federal law applies in every state, even Missouri after it went with Constitutional Carry, as over 1/5th of the states have previously done with nary a detrimental result.
And as a reminder of how few times righteous private owners sell to people who cannot own guns, one needs only look at the statistics for federal prosecutions of violations of this law. In 2014, only a few hundred were prosecuted for such an illegal sale out of the tens of millions of sales made that year. Private sellers almost always follow the law, apparently.
Labels: Constitutional Carry, Gun Control; Ignorance, Hissy Fit. NYT
Thursday, April 26, 2007
New York Times on Gun Violence
The NYT editorial yesterday started off so promisingly.
By now, the logic is almost automatic. A shooter takes innocent lives, and someone says that if the victims had been armed, this wouldn't have happened. The only solution to a gun in the wrong hands, it seems, is a gun in the hands of everyone.
Yeah, I thought, an armed society is a polite society. Good guys outnumber bad guys. They called it logic. This was good.
But the editors were being sarcastic, it seems.
Seung-Hui Cho bought his guns illegally, though with the appearance of legality. He slipped through a loophole, through a disconnect between the way Virginia defines a disqualifying mental incapacity and the way the federal government does.
No, the privacy concerns regarding all health including mental health kept the fact of the miserable murder's adjudication and brief committal to what used to be called a state hospital for the insane, kept that information off the background check databases. No rational friend of the Second Amendment wants floridly psychotic people to obtain guns legally, despite what the NYT alleges.
Those gun advocates who believe that the Second Amendment confers the right to carry a gun in public are quick to point out that they are law-abiding, decent citizens trying to protect themselves and their families in a world gone mad. But, of course, the guns can’t tell the difference. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster.
Guns can't tell the difference? The editors are clearly delusional. The guns are hunks of metal, they are not cognizant. Can't tell the difference between what? And the money quote. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster. This has been said by the NYT editors about every state creating a shall issue a carry permit to every law abiding citizen who wants one law. It will be like Dodge City; it will be anarchy! Well, 39 states have such a scheme and anarchy has yet to arrive. Indeed, gun violence has declined, particularly in states with such laws. An armed society is a polite, and law abiding, society.
True safety lies in the civility of society, in laws that publicly protect all of our rights and in having law-enforcement officers who are trained in the use of deadly force, then authorized to apply it in rationally defined situations. I'm OK with the first clause and with the second as well, but relying on the police to protect you is the real recipe for disaster. They are not there in time to protect you except in extraordinary circumstances.
I am obliged to every person I meet that he or she does not murder me, to update Mr. Burke; but if I don't want to be a complete pawn of fate, I might exercise my Second Amendment right, just in case I cross paths with a disturbed person intent on committing suicide with company.
By now, the logic is almost automatic. A shooter takes innocent lives, and someone says that if the victims had been armed, this wouldn't have happened. The only solution to a gun in the wrong hands, it seems, is a gun in the hands of everyone.
Yeah, I thought, an armed society is a polite society. Good guys outnumber bad guys. They called it logic. This was good.
But the editors were being sarcastic, it seems.
Seung-Hui Cho bought his guns illegally, though with the appearance of legality. He slipped through a loophole, through a disconnect between the way Virginia defines a disqualifying mental incapacity and the way the federal government does.
No, the privacy concerns regarding all health including mental health kept the fact of the miserable murder's adjudication and brief committal to what used to be called a state hospital for the insane, kept that information off the background check databases. No rational friend of the Second Amendment wants floridly psychotic people to obtain guns legally, despite what the NYT alleges.
Those gun advocates who believe that the Second Amendment confers the right to carry a gun in public are quick to point out that they are law-abiding, decent citizens trying to protect themselves and their families in a world gone mad. But, of course, the guns can’t tell the difference. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster.
Guns can't tell the difference? The editors are clearly delusional. The guns are hunks of metal, they are not cognizant. Can't tell the difference between what? And the money quote. Arming more people would be a recipe for disaster. This has been said by the NYT editors about every state creating a shall issue a carry permit to every law abiding citizen who wants one law. It will be like Dodge City; it will be anarchy! Well, 39 states have such a scheme and anarchy has yet to arrive. Indeed, gun violence has declined, particularly in states with such laws. An armed society is a polite, and law abiding, society.
True safety lies in the civility of society, in laws that publicly protect all of our rights and in having law-enforcement officers who are trained in the use of deadly force, then authorized to apply it in rationally defined situations. I'm OK with the first clause and with the second as well, but relying on the police to protect you is the real recipe for disaster. They are not there in time to protect you except in extraordinary circumstances.
I am obliged to every person I meet that he or she does not murder me, to update Mr. Burke; but if I don't want to be a complete pawn of fate, I might exercise my Second Amendment right, just in case I cross paths with a disturbed person intent on committing suicide with company.
Labels: Gun Control; Ignorance
Monday, April 23, 2007
So Much For Legislative Expertise
Remember Tipper Gore testifying about dirty rock and pop lyrics before a House sub-committee about 15 years ago? I think Frank Zappa and John Denver testified as well. Tipper's efforts helped, in an unknown way, to bring about the voluntary and pretty much useless warning label on CDs regarding lyrics. Here's a story I recall about her expertise in the field. Someone asked her about the movie Wayne's World and she said she liked it, especially the part where the metal heads (her words) were riding around listening to opera*.
Just because you're trying to pass a law which will effect thousands to millions of people for the rest of time, that doesn't mean you actually have to know anything about the subject or even about the details of your proposed legislation. Take Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-Long Island, NY). She is trying to bring back a harsher version of the assault gun ban (and clip or magazine proper capacity manufacturing ban). She even wants to ban "barrel shrouds." What are those, you ask? Well, let's go to the videotape and see if Rep. McCarthy can explain the term to Tucker Carlson. The tape is very short.
A barrel shroud, in case you actually cared, is usually a piece of metal, often a cylinder and often perforated with holes in a regular pattern, which goes over an exposed gun barrel and allows the user of the gun to grab the shrouded barrel without burning one's hands. Here's an example below. Wooo, really scary; we can't have people owning those!
Here's the early 20th Century version of the barrel shroud--wood. Would that be banned too?
Just because you're trying to pass a law which will effect thousands to millions of people for the rest of time, that doesn't mean you actually have to know anything about the subject or even about the details of your proposed legislation. Take Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-Long Island, NY). She is trying to bring back a harsher version of the assault gun ban (and clip or magazine proper capacity manufacturing ban). She even wants to ban "barrel shrouds." What are those, you ask? Well, let's go to the videotape and see if Rep. McCarthy can explain the term to Tucker Carlson. The tape is very short.
A barrel shroud, in case you actually cared, is usually a piece of metal, often a cylinder and often perforated with holes in a regular pattern, which goes over an exposed gun barrel and allows the user of the gun to grab the shrouded barrel without burning one's hands. Here's an example below. Wooo, really scary; we can't have people owning those!
Here's the early 20th Century version of the barrel shroud--wood. Would that be banned too?
* Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (Listen) is not opera, but rock and roll--wimpy, overproduced, semi-bombastic rock and roll, but rock and roll none the less; and even the least informed of the baby boom generation know it's rock and roll, not opera.
Labels: Gun Control; Ignorance
