Dissection of the Day: The Only Ones

What happens when you let highly trained personnel go camping with their guns? Joel knows, and it's a hoot.

Altogether now, kids, "The Itsy-Bitsy Hoplophobe..."

As my friend John of the GMA mocks the anti-gun statists: "Well, whaddya know. They do have a playbook."  He found it at the blog of our dependable Robb Allen.

Even the "executive summary"  is gagworthy. For instance: "Advocates for gun violence prevention win the logical debate, but lose on more emotional 
terms". 

Right. After every headline shooting, the antigun forces take to their research cubicles, calmly compile facts and responsible opinions and historical references, then soberly present them to a waiting world in carefully worded white papers. It would be unheard of for them to bawl and snivel all over the teevee audience, beshitting better minds with temper tantrums and crying jags that would get a pre-schooler sent off to the special needs room.

I recommend a read on this. Not that we didn't already know it, but it confirms that   the marching orders to the Pelosi crowd order them to go for the gut, and anything like honest understanding be damned.

His Teleprompter Speaks

United States of America: The streets and schools are awash in blood, ergo it is my job as your president to advocate strict civilian gun control. In the end, only agents of the duly constituted authority should be armed.

Syria: The streets and schools are awash in blood, ergo it is my job as your president to arm the Syrian civilians in order that they may shoot down agents of the duly constituted authority.

Even before there was a 3D printer...

3D printer gun, the short version

The latest Oh My Gawd and Gee Whiz! panic  -- the plastic gun from your 3D printer --  is this year's version of Y2K when the zombies leaped from your computer and chewed up your brains.

The hand wringers hope above hope that no one will Bing "zip gun" and notice the 63,700,000 references. Piece of pipe, Gorilla tape, couple of springs (rubber bands can work), hunk of steel, nail. If you want to get fancy you can add a handful of machine screws and a tap and die set from Home Depot.

Look, I'm only a tinkerer, but if I can't make a better pistol out of stuff found in half the home workshops of America, I'll kiss your Cloraxed arse on the front porch of 505 27th Street in Ogden, Utah, and let you hire the Tabernacle Choir for a warm-up act.

Stand Your Ground Defense?

Zimmerman says not yet anyway, and that's subtle good news for those of us who believe SYG is a proper legal doctrine, permitting a citizen to defend himself anywhere.

His attorneys want to gamble to the extent of hearing the state's case before abandoning the Florida SYG protection altogether. They claim the law permits a SYG hearing any time, not just before deciding on whether to risk it before going to trial. The prosecution may resist but that is  another issue.

My reading persuades me there's a near-consensus that Zimmerman has only a traditional self-defense case to make, that SYG was written and intended only to     prevent  prosecution in a clear case of defense against unprovoked attack.  Zimmerman created the confrontation when he had other reasonable options, such as calling the cops from the safety of his car.

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My state had a fair chance of getting SYG protection until the Zimmerman case stopped it cold. If, when the dust settles, it can be made plain that such law is inoperative in cases like this, it will be back on the table. Talk it up.

Look, Joe Scarborough

The Boston bomber did not "legally buy an M4."  Not at a gun show, gun store, WalMart, or Dunkin' Donuts.

Period. Story over.

The Fun Resumes, or Loopholing in Lutfiskia

It's Worthington again this weekend, one of those small country shows I enjoy.

The only urgent want is a No. 4 shell holder for the Lee Auto Prime, but I'll be in Condition Red for primers and powder. Given our experience at loopholes since the election, I am not optimistic.

I'm still looking for an interesting piece to shoot all that .38 Special cluttering up the place. The snubbie in residence will set it off, but since when is any Taurus interesting?  Again, not cheery, and here we enter the realm of legality against the recent  (if DOA) congressional discussion of allowing interstate sales of handguns, at least to  concealed-carry holders.

As you know, Mr. FFL can sell you an assaulty looking rifle with a zillion-bullet clip anywhere you travel. But he is forbidden to transfer an Old Model Ruger Black Hawk to you unless you reside in his state.  (Capacity five bullets plus $20 buryin' money rolled in the chamber under the hammer.)  Your CCW makes no difference.

The practical effect of that is that buying one at Worthington would create two felons, me and the dealer,  whereas if the show happened just 11 miles south, a foot over the state line, we would instead be a pair of exemplary citizens.

It would be nice to kill that illogicality, but in the current climate I doubt it will even go kof-kof for attention.

In fact, post-Boston, I don't see how we can avoid another defensive stand on at least a couple of fronts. Congressthings will find teevee time and perhaps votes by demanding trackers in in our IMR 3031. They'll also covet background checks and registration every time we need a fresh pound of Unique.

In an evil way I'm looking forward to the first drive to take black powder off the market. Someone like Senator Feinstein will announce that if we ban it there will be no more. That should give one of us a chance to work up the shortest riposte of the year: Bat shit.  

A better gun bill?

Breaking news. This just in to WTMR News Central:

Sens. Grassley of Iowa and Cruz of Texas just popped a news release onto our desk. It announces their last-minute amendment to the Obama Administration's gun bill.

I've taken time to read only the contents section, but the money fact is that it appears to attack violence without a useless pretense of background checks.

It needs to fit into the already-set machinery, and I haven't the vaguest guess about its prospects.

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I never write much about Grassley, though I like him personally and consider him -- at worst --  one of the better men serving in Congress. A lot of us wish we could we could pry him away from his love affair with mandated ethanol and other welfare schemes for the ag industry. (He has a down-home awww-shucks demeanor which occasionally moves the literati to write him off as a hick. Usually they do it only once, chastened by the embarrassment of wondering what to do with that bundle he hands them. "Will my detached Ivy League ass fit  in my attache case?")

Don't know much about Cruz except that he sometimes has an impolitic mouth. To be expected, I suppose. After all, he's elected from the same state that once hired Ann Richardson's to govern the place.

Mere near

Sometimes I empathize with reporters trying to do a good job. Take Alan Fram of the AP for example.  He was assigned the overnighter on today's scheduled votes on  S.649 -- the Big Gun Control Bill. As is known from here to Planet Zangaro, the key to this thing is the Manchin/Toomey amendment to dink around with Feinstein's original language on background checks.

Like everyone else in the media, Fram probably began by buying the Obama adjective  "universal,"  then switched to "enhanced" and "expanded" when even the anti-rights left quietly abandoned  -- as untenable -- their lie that the checks would be within a dozen parsecs of universality. And that led the poor ink-stained wretch to:

"Just over half the public — 52 percent — expressed disapproval in the new survey of how President Barack Obama has handled gun laws. Weeks after the Newtown slayings, Obama made a call for near universal background checks the heart of his gun control plan."


"Near universal" is a valiant effort, but an impossibility in a context of reason, as in the emo mother's wail that dear sweet Snooki is nearly a virgin but, unforunately, also nearly pregnant.

Even competent journalists must work in a linguistic setting controlled by the loudest liars on every side of a hot issue. That's not because they necessarily want to, but because their sound-bite-conditioned audiences expect it, a general readership that, in fact, would be lost without buzz words.

And reporters themselves become similarly conditioned.  They shouldn't, but they do. That's one reason you never read a mass-media report that the term "        (adjective)  background check" is, all by itself, a lie.

It does not examine your "background." It scans records compiled by bureaucrats and associated -- correctly or otherwise -- with your name. The same sorts of records kept by the same sorts of data entry drones that screw up your bank balance, credit record, IRS standing, medical history, and even from time to time, criminal history.

Even with 100 per cent accuracy, the Inner Party's database has a probability of being irrelevant to "who you are."  Take mine. I have a 23-year rap sheet consisting of guilty pleas to two nefarious failures to heed a snow-removal ordinance plus a speeding bust. This proves irresponsibility -- the very quality Sen. Feinstein believes prima facie evidence of unfitness to bear arms. Think that's a silly argument? Please recall a New York effort a few years ago to deny gun permits to folks who failed to pay parking tickets on time.

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Back to you, Alan of the AP: Take no offense. That piece is a good summary of what we face in the Senate today. Besides, I'll bet that in a world less saturated with meaning-free gobbledygook, you wouldn't even think of typing "near universal." 

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For  meticulous followers of the Senate sausage mill, the Manchin/Toomey amendment is S.Amdt 714 to Feinstein's main bill which is S.649.  The media reports that eight votes will be taken today, and if you have the stomach to follow closely, the bill itself and all amendments are detailed here.

Shall I shoot the bastard?

The fellow in St. George, Utah, did not. He racked his pistol slide.The burglar  ran.The homeowner gave chase. The thug tripped and the homeowner held him under the gun until police arrived.

I call that a near-perfect result, although I understand an opposing view that anyone who invades your bedroom at 4:45 a.m. needs killing, and even that this world is an incrementally better place for each violent criminal who is quickly and economically dispatched to the next. 

That incident is the peg on which the AP's Adam Geller hangs a report on the various views of armed self defense.  While is far from a bad report, it manages to avoid two points most of us find important.

(1) Geller cites studies and experts (often self-styled) who argue that because America suffers less reported crime now than 20 years ago, the need for armed self-defense  is reduced.

This confuses two separate issues. Fewer thugs doing violent things across a nation of 320 million souls is a welcome fact but meaningless to exactly one decent human being facing a criminal in an existential moment when his choice is life or death.  Phrased less abstractly: "This son of a bitch is in my house, threatening me and mine. Killing him immediately is one of my legitimate choices." There couldn't much urge at that moment to ponder the latest FBI crime report. 

(2) Geller reports that more Americans are arming themselves for purposes of self-defense than 20 years ago*  but misses the opportunity to explore the fact as one cause of reduced crime. 

Again,  you and I are in familiar territory here, although the generality of wire service readers probably is not. 

A thief or rapist or killer wants what is yours, but he wants it minimum risk. While he is willing to risk arrest and a protracted trip trough the criminal justice system, he is loathe to chance immediate career termination via  "bang" -- a would-be victim's gun. He looks for the truly unarmed victim from  little gun-free zones to big places governed by such as the Sullivan Act.

It would be more fun to snark the Geller piece to death, but, as I said, it seems to be a honest effort to contribute something useful to the debate.

Pass it to know what's in it...

Remember about 36 hours ago, before the cloture vote, some of us were  missing and poaning about not being able to find an actual text of the bill to disarm everyone except criminals?

It turns out we had company in high places.

Mike Lee of Utah -- pretty much on our side -- brought up the minor detail. Frisco Feinstein said me too, but it seemed to bother her less.

Still grinding the gun-politics sausage

Let us honor the filibuster. Think of it as a precautionary dose of Valium to be taken before doing something massively stupid.  Or counting to ten before you ballkick the boss.

You don't even need to use it. The mere threat settles things down. Three weeks ago, it looked like the left would insist on trying to gut the Second Amendment and, in consequence, face at least 41 senators saying "no" at great length and handing HIs Ineptness the place where the pants fit tight.

That would have been the optimum result, but it really wasn't in the cards. The national drama contest  after Newtown all but guaranteed that we would lose something, just as did the World Trade Center bombing.  When the mobs circle up for a an intense tear jerk, it's hard to stop them, harder yet when they're led by  our wet-eyed national primo and his dependable cadre.

At the moment it appears we will lose something but could actually gain a mite from the Toomey-Manchin "compromise" designed to ward off the filibuster. The New York Times reports:

The bill also enhances some gun rights. For instance, it would allow gun owners who have undergone background checks within the past five years for a concealed-carry permit to use the permit to buy guns in other states, and it would relax some of the restrictions on hunters traveling with their guns through states that do not permit them. It would also allow active members of the military to buy firearms in their home states, currently prohibited when they are stationed outside their state.


Tearing down the iron curtains of state borders for interstate gun purchasing  is long overdue, even if it depends on holding a Mommy-May-I Card from our state bureaucrats.* So is expansion and clarification of the federal innocent-passage doctrine. 

What we lose is our right to make our own judgements about people to whom we, as private citizens,  can responsibly sell or trade our guns. In return, America will gain precisely nothing. Inter-thug trading in Glocks will continue merrily, especially in neighborhoods like ones our president organized before beginning his climb up the federal pay scale.

The content of the Senate bill as reported here needs to be viewed cautiously. A wide internet ramble turns up no actual legislative language..

The Toomey web site is as close as I can come to a draft of the legislation.  I suppose you can trust it to the extent you can trust any elected nabob to tell you the truth.

 (The actual bill may not yet be written. Picture Mountain-Dewed young staff munchkins spending this night hunched over word processors, large bags of chemically flavored  corn chips close at hand.)

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*I hope no one reminds the gun-ban left of a consequence they can't see. When the state CCW becomes some sort of national pass for firearms purchases, the demand for them will soar. Okay by me, but I expect the Feinstein gang will develop  a new interest in the price of Depends.

A clip full of toilet paper, if you please Ma'am

We've all been subjected to a good a deal of deep, dynamic, unalloyed ignorance in the current debate.

We're used to it, of course. Every Second Amendment rights defender  is continually explaining facts at a kindergarten level.  "And the bullet goes round and round and it comes out here..."

Anyone who hasn't isn't in the game.

Occasionally, however,  despair is understandable. Somewhere in Colorado, adult Americans elected Diana to public office.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO): "I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available."

Setting aside the basic illiteracy of  "...these are ammunition," has this woman actually sat through the lengthy debate in America's  highest councils and come away assured that firearms magazines are as reusable as Charmin?

When dumb goes that deep, I doubt the synapses can be repaired. Stitch her lips shut. Roll her west from Wolf Creek Pass. Just to see if she makes it all the way to Pagosa Springs.

Note on the formerly free state of Connecticut

As written by free men and women some years ago:


Connecticut gun code of 1650:

"All persons shall bear arms, and every male person shall have in continual readiness a good muskitt or other gunn, fitt for service." 

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As written this week by a quite different breed:

The bill text is here. 

It is tough going but probably essential reading. If you can't be bothered, I suppose a fair summary is this: "Your natural right of armed self-defense as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed; you may or may not be granted a limited privilege of preserving your life and property. We, your elected and appointed masters,will decide."

Crying solves nothing, but a tear or two here would not open you to any important criticism. 

Background checks

I cave in on the the subject, but you have to do it intelligently, that is, my way. The official Jim Teamer for President Campaign position on firearms sales will require documentation for all transactions. Each buyer will provide the seller with the following statement:

I certify that I am of legal age, not a felon, and not mentally ill. (Signature)

It is to be printed on business card stock which may contain no other information. Firearms sellers will be encouraged to retain them in a drawer for a little while.

And to think Ayn Rand loved Colorado

Once upon a time in America, usually west of the Missouri, there was a useful tradition in journalism. It was a private-sector enterprise called "horse whipping." An editor usually earned the honor by revealing himself to be stupid, self-righteous, and incompetent.

We take you now to Colorado:

The Clements shooting illustrated why the bills, fiercely opposed by gun-rights advocates, were necessary, said Hickenlooper, 61. In a televised new briefing, the first-term Democrat said the killing, while not appearing to be connected with the new laws, was “an act of intimidation.”

The Hickenlooper mentioned is the governor who privately giggles, we suppose, at his progress in making the Centennial State a gun-free zone if you don't count the criminals.

Hickenlooper's new law primarily outlaws high capacity magazines  -- 15 rounds maximum -- and requires a peaceable citizen to buy a background check if he wants to sell Pa's old L.C. Smith to his next-door neighbor. This sort of policy, he implies, would have kept prison boss Clements alive.

--Never mind that we haven't yet the faintest notion of what kind of weapon was used. The possibilities run from a dreaded assault rifle carrying 30 rounds to a less-dreaded assault rifle carrying only 15  to a single-shot Winchester high-wall in .25-20 to a Ruger Black Hawk sixgun to a  .... you get the idea.

(But wait. One more. A really thorough police investigation would make sure no one stole Shotgun Biden's double-barrel 12.)

--Never mind that the killer may have been been able to pass a background check, or had stolen the gun, or borrowed it from his brother-in-law. Or or or.

Governor, there is yet no reason to believe your linkage exists, and you are blood dancing over the unfortunate Mr. Clement's corpse. We award you the Scarlet Letter D. For demagogue. Or dope. Or duplicitous.

Now, a bit of cleanup here. I opened with a shot at the reporters and editors responsible for the cited paragraph, and that in and of itself is unfair. Carefully and somewhat charitably read, it merely reports the Hickenlooper dissimulation. It becomes both fair and germane in context of the entire fawning report, beginning  with the lede:

Colorado begins the task of implementing its toughest gun laws in a decade even as police searched for a suspect, and a motive, in the shooting death of the state’s top prisons official.

And ending:

Debra Reed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the Clements killing proved why such laws are crucial.

“This is incredibly sad irony that this has taken place less than 24 hours before the governor planned to sign meaningful gun legislation,” she said. “There is no better illustration of what damage guns can do in the wrong hands.”

Those Brady kids are always good for a dandy tear-jerk finish, aren't they?

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The other thing, I guess, is that I'm probably a little over the line in implying that we ought to restore corporal punishment for propagandists posing as journalists.

Okay. I recant. You shouldnt. I will go only this far.  If you horse-whip one who richly deserves it, I shall refrain from editorializing against you.

Feinstein stamps her foot

Ted Cruz of Texas asked the author of the bill to ban esthetically displeasing rifles if she would also favor selective bans on the right to free speech,  Amendment I.

"I'm not a sixth-grader," said a visibly upset (Sen. Diane) Feinstein. She described her decades in Congress involved in gun control debates and said, "I'm reasonably well-educated, and thank you for the lecture."

(1) -- Maybe Sen. Ted was just fooled by your imitation of a horrified elementary school kid when you yowled about "shoulder thingies."

(2) -- Your decades-on-the job defense has called up in millions of minds the hoary joke about highly experienced mules.

(3) -- I'll buy your "reasonably well educated" only if you advance the volume on and highly inflect the term "reasonably."  Which brings us full circle -- back to your well-educated opposition to the mortal peril inherent in thingies.

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The Judiciary Committee passed the ban. No surprise. It and Sen. Schumer's draconian national gun registration bill (posing as a universal background check) are in the full Senate's in box. Feinstein's bill is close to DOA. Schumer's is iffier. Each would also need to clear the House where gun control opposition is broader and deeper.

A Jayhawker Stands His Ground

As a general thing, I oppose Kansas farmers shooting down Iowans, but I'm not unreasonable on the subject. Even a good herd benefits from an occasional and careful culling.

That leads me to applaud the actions of the sherf and prosecutors down in the Free Soil country of Sumner County where an unnamed farmer ended the career of a probation jumper from Creston, Iowa. They're giving him a self-defense pass, and knowing my fellow rustics as I do, I suspect his neighbors will throw a barbecue in his honor.

Kansas has a stand-your-ground law, and it appears to me that it was written specifically to cover cases like this where fugitive Joe Lamasters died in barn after making a bad tactical decision -- to leap from behind a pile of feed sacks into the enfilade area of Farmer's shotgun. As the sheriff reported, the perp "deceased right there."

Cops across the area had been looking for Lamasters and added the courtesy of going door-to-door to tell citizens of a bad guy skulking around. (in a county with a rural population density of maybe four per square mile, "door-to-door" takes on a special meaning.)

It's worth noting that Farmer had Lamasters under the gun twice. The first time the fugitive turned and ran. Farmer decided to have no truck with  back-shooting. But the perp made the mistake of fleeing toward another farm where the good citizen believed a woman might be home alone. Farmer went there, found the house empty, and decided to check the outbuildings.

Courage, good judgement, and the shotgun did the rest, but please don't take this as an endorsement of Double-Barrel Biden. My take on the subject would be just the same even if the Kansas farmer had used a Bushmaster with a shoulder thingie and 40 bullets in the clip. But he probably didn't even own one.

Ain't no call for that plastic crap when a feller's got a real nice 12-gauge hanging over the back door. :) 

The Ugly Twins today

The left-wing must be having a dreary day. For months it has controlled the debate. Say what you want about the statists, but they are very, very good at manipulating symbols and orchestrating media hysteria.

They aren't quitting this morning as their vox pop pretensions collide with reality in the form of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. But they are not advancing, either.

Three bills are directly important to libertarian thinkers.*

One is relatively innocuous. It strengthens straw-purchase laws already on the books, and even pro-2A  Sen. Chuck Grassley promises to support it if his clean-up amendments are accepted. It will be reported out of committee and has good final-passage prospects.

The other two are vile.

The Feinstein bill to ban some assaultish-appearing rifles will also be favorably reported out by the Democrat-controlled committee, but there isn't a smart dime in Vegas which gives it much chance of senate passage.

The same senators will also send the "universal" background check bill, in one form or another, to the full senate. Then Sen. Schumer has two pertinent problems: (1) To persuade a majority that criminals will submit to the law {square the circle} and (2) Explain how it can be made practicable without a complete national firearms registry {convert pi to a rational number}.

So, the Obama-stoked fearfest aside, we appear to hold strong cards, even in the Senate. The house, of course, is stronger, and I doubt that even Bloomberg has enough money to buy off that body this early in the election cycle; 2014 is another matter.

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*A fourth would appropriate money we don't have for more school security. The number being tossed around in the markup stage is about $400 million over a few years -- about enough to create a new federal office in charge of  saying that we need more school security.)