I'm even more sick of late night comedians insisting that you and I, as law abiding gun owners, are to blame for mass murder. No, Kimmel, you sanctimonious copraphage, the only person responsible is the one pulling the trigger. Not obeying laws is sort of a minimum job requirement for criminals, and if someone is going to commit mass murder, which usually includes suicide, I don't really think minor process crimes are going to slow them.
So since the start of the reports coming in involved this mysterious new term "bump stock" (Paul Ryan said he had never heard of them), they've been on the chopping block. Several bloggers have already said they'd gladly trade the bump stock for national carry reciprocity and/or the SHARE act and/or lots of other things. I like Aesop's over at Raconteur Report best of what I've seen but I can honestly feel the fear emanating from Slide Fire. They're selling a perfectly legal product to perfectly willing buyers and they're going to get run out of business because of a lunatic and the cowardly rush to "do something" even if it's not right.
Regular readers will know this is one of my regular rants, but I have a whole bunch of things I consider reasonable gun laws.
Let's start here. I just bought my Ruger Precision Rifle (The Precious) online from Palmetto State Armory in July. Any non-prohibited person can walk into their local sporting goods store and walk out with one of those, or a shot gun, or any other long gun just by plunking down their payment, filling out the 4473 and getting the NICS check. So why did it have to go through a local FFL's hands? All that did was raise my price $35. Why can't I fill out an electronic 4473 online and have it shipped directly to my house? The local FFL had an electronic 4473 I filled out there, why can't I connect to that server from my home and use that form, or connect to one where I bought the gun? What advantage is there to society from shipping it to an FFL? They can look at my driver's license and verify I'm me? Puh-lease. With today's computer security and ability to forge documents?
In consumer goods, your local camera shop, say, really does have to compete with the big guys in New York. Gun shops don't have that. I can see how local gun shops might really like this setup. They get an easy 35 bucks for filling out the forms and "receiving" the shipment, but I don't think there's any value added to us or society. There was certainly no value added to me.
If there's a mandatory 3 or 5 day waiting period for a handgun where you live (Florida waives that for Concealed Carry licensees), why can't you order it online and wait 3 or 5 days for UPS to deliver it? Again, with today's computer security, you could verify age, do a NICS check - anything the local shop can do - online. I think the waiting periods are all bullsh*t anyway, just another way for government to yank our chains and make it harder than it ought to be. I've never seen any data that waiting periods have ever done anything except inconvenience legal purchasers. But, fine, we'll play your infantile waiting game -- now how does waiting 3 days to pick up a gun in my city differ from waiting 3 days to get it delivered by UPS or FedEx?
What possible arguments are there against this? We can't guarantee security, we can't guarantee that criminals won't order guns online? Criminals don't have any problems getting guns now while staying out of the system entirely. If we use strong security, it's as good as what we have. One time I posted something like this and a commenter said, "what if your kids used your ID?" I wouldn't want my kids buying anything under my ID on my computer. If you can't control your own kids in your own house, I think that's a bigger problem than what they're buying. Maybe you should be making sure they don't know the combination to your safe and don't know where to find matches.
I guess I'm arguing for a complete end to the FFL to FFL monopoly. Why not? Along with that, I want complete deregulation of silencers (SHARE makes them subject to the 4473). This one actually is for the children. And for anyone who moves next door to gun ranges or clubs and gets disturbed by the sounds. From what I read, I don't think I'm dropping my hearing protection even if I have the can, but Show Me the Data. It strikes me as absurd that we require mufflers on cars or motorcycles but prohibit them on guns. I know it originally goes back to preventing people from poaching the King's deer, but now it's all about the Hollywood mythology that Hillary espouses.
We should eliminate postal restrictions against mailing of firearms. We can ship them via UPS, or FedEx, why not USPS? Don't they need every penny of revenue they can get?
Get rid of the stupid “sporting purpose” tests for firearms. The Heller decision makes it very clear that the Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting. This particularly affects imports. No restrictions.
Get rid of the stupid laws on short barreled rifles and shotguns. The idea that a shotgun barrel 18.05" long is fine, but one that's 17.95" is some sort of monster death machine-weapon is just silly. It's there simply to create law violators. It's also one of their most enforced laws - probably because it's really easy to measure barrel length.
How's that for a start? It doesn't take away enough of BATFE's work to close them down, but maybe downsize them 50%?
The Homo Sapiens Sapiens animal has genetically-transmitted brain instincts for monkey troop politics. As a result, most of the humans on the planet are National Socialist in political outlook. The celebrities on the mainstream media who champion government are not a few bad apples, they are reflective of broad human consensus.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the 1% who are freethinkers work out moral rules for themselves, they don't just accept the rules of their herd. Today, freethinkers end up libertarian. Liberty will arrive when libertarians make defensive arrangements which stalemate voters into MAD, uphill against the 99:1 ratio, and not a moment before.
Because I'm one of the bloggers who indicated he'd accept a trade of the bump-fires for something...
ReplyDeleteGladly isn't the term I'd use.
I'd phrase it more along the lines of, "since they're going to get their damn pound of flesh no matter what we do, let's make sure we get something for it."
For a change. Since it's been nearly 83 bleeping years of them taking and us giving with nothing to show for our "compromises".
Bump fire becomes NFA, but I get national reciprocity? I'm CCW to Bloomberg's office stoop BECAUSE I CAN NOW. Lose the Slide-Fire but silencers are 4473 and NICS? I'm buying a shitty lathe and starting to make my own because now the price of messing up the cuts is just some cheap steel rather than $200 and a year per.
I ain't happy about it, no Sir.
since they're going to get their damn pound of flesh no matter what we do
DeleteObjectively false. One thing you could do is to stop paying the salaries of their employees.
I ain't happy about it, no Sir.
You're happy enough to obey their laws, and that's all that matters.
@ Anonymous. That is just stupid. So you are saying that just because I would rather follow the law than become a criminal by refusing to follow the law, or refusing to pay taxes means that I am happy about it?
DeleteSo I should do what? Shoot it out with the cops, or go to prison for tax evasion or possession of an unregistered machine gun? Tam once said that the way to find the ATF informant is just listen to see which person is the one urging you to violate the law.
Never compromise, never give up, never give in. You are not dealing with honest people and reasonable compromises. The reason we have 10,000 gun laws on the books is because we compromised because they were going to get their pound of flesh anyway. Each and every one of those 10,000 gun laws have tripped up some poor schlub honest citizen and cost them their home and assets to defend against and probably still went to jail. The goal is to intimidate, harass and legislate gun owners into oblivion.
DeleteHere is my "compromise": Declare that all gun laws must be federal and states cannot infringe upon the 2nd amendment. Rescind all 10,000 laws and have just one law of the land on guns; the 2nd amendment.
Syphilis, tuberculosis. Cigarettes? Watching your smart phone instead of interacting with humans around you? In some times and places wasting diseases have affected most members of a first world population. No reason to think mental illness is exempt from this distribution. You could have complete liberty in one day, starting any day you refuse to obey bad laws. This was first written about in 1549 in France. Why do people who have studied a subject area, like gun nuts have, obey what they know to be bad laws? Is this a common mental illness?
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard78.html
Again: How to spot the ATF/FBI informant: He is the one urging you to break the law.
DeleteNot just that, but an "anonymous" ID may block your identity from bloggers and casual blog readers, but it would be pretty darned foolish to assume it blocks your ID from the FBI or anyone else in the Fed.gov that would want to know. In light of everything else we know saying the Google, Facebook and all the rest are essentially intelligence collection arms of the Fed.gov.
DeleteHello SGB great place you have, Thank you Sir.
ReplyDeleteWhen do we get to have a common sense discussion about the political party that produces the vast number of these killers? the same party that mistook the preamble of our constitution to claim powers to regulate life itself. the same party that demands the death of our most innocent while championing the life's of all historical maniacal killers and death row inmates .
Our constant battle between good and evil has raged long before the written word. These few decades they have moved from the left straight into despotism and openly flaunt their disdain towards their enemies. Please continue the fight for good it is not hard to recognize and we need much more of it.
This has not one damn thing to do with gun parts. The entire debate is over WHO GETS CONTROL. Ether its the "whole of the people" or only those empowered by the king and his men. AND to Divemedics rhetorical question, Yes. If you honestly believe that laws are unjust , illegal and oppressive you should be willing do kill and die for your ideals. That you won't, and don't says a lot about every part of your life, and what you stand for. "Go along to get along" just makes one a "good German". America is in the fix it is in because "good people do nothing"---Ray
ReplyDeleteSo I should do what?
ReplyDeleteObviously you should relocate and concentrate into ghettos/reservations for ethnic cleansing, register your guns, turn in your guns, give up your occupations when your storefront windows are smashed, and finally get on the boxcars to the death camps. That's the outcome your actions will produce.
Am I MLK or an informant? Impossible for you to tell. Protect yourself, speak in public as if I am an informant. Nevertheless, there is the German Jewish 'don't make trouble' approach and the MLK civil rights 'don't comply' approach, and only one of them was successful. Don't think you are only 1 in 350 million who wants liberty, because you aren't. Suppose you knew today that 10 million felt exactly as you do. What then?
Or maybe the illusion of an imaginary friend in Washington shepherding you is so comforting that you would be willing to die of an infection in an understaffed US hospital, than to change your beliefs privately in your mind.
I was once told that philosophy is the difference between the way you believe the world should be and the way the world really is. I admire Anon's philosophy, and his bravery if he indeed practices what he preaches.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us live in the real world. If you are a parent and don't want your kids to be taken by CPS, you pay "your" taxes, don't spend a lot of time in public about "the Feds this, the cops that", or killing bureaucrats, etc. (Yes, kids have been taken from their parents - including a newborn infant in Massachusetts a few years back.)
Those of us approaching the end of our lives, with no one to be concerned about besides, perhaps, a spouse who believes the way you do and has the courage to stand by you, can afford to be more open about what you consider intolerable, and perhaps ignore some or all of the laws you know are unConstitutional, or simply violate natural law.
There may come a time in the not-too-distant future when all bets are off, and you either take up arms against those who have a history of killing hundreds of millions of their own citizens, or you hold your hands out for your chains. For most of us, that time has not yet arrived. As far as I can see the danger is this:
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Winston Churchill
Well said, Reg.
DeleteI've always said that if some sort door-to-door confiscation or round ups start, the first few people are going to be caught unawares. Once the word starts to get around, it will quickly become a level of ugly the world has never seen.
If Weapons Man was right, and I think he was, there's around 600 million privately held guns in this country. Just do the math.
Ergo, it's not going to happen that way.
A single disobeyer dies in prison like Irwin Schiff. 250,000 disobeyers receive zero consequences, like gun non-registrars in Connecticut. "Go to prison for tax evasion or possession of an unregistered machine gun" of any mass movement is a straw man, an exaggeration made because the objective facts don't support the argument. Why are you speaking fallacies in support of the state? Are you a government school teacher?
ReplyDeleteIn the real world, Denninger claims the purchasing power of your retirement payments is going to end due to Medicare cost growth within Trump's administration. The idea of a long, placid, secure retirement is a mirage. You should be figuring out now how you are going to earn a living for the rest of your life. The biggest improvement in that projected outcome is to stop being prevented from doing sensible things by bad laws. I think infections and medical errors in understaffed hospitals is one of the largest risks you actually face today. You can avoid getting into a Lexington Green type situation; you cannot avoid a joint replacement, cancer surgery, etc.
It didn't happen that way in Connecticut, despite the governor trying it. But, there is more than one way to cleanse an ethnicity.
ReplyDeleteThe Affordable Care Act says you are not allowed to start new doctor-owned hospitals, or expand existing ones, like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Instead of the ridiculous 'unregistered machine gun' straw man, I think you should start hundreds of efficiently-priced medical care offices. At the same time, start hundreds of honest major medical insurance plans to pay these reduced prices.
Swapping bump stocks for reciprocity may not be as easy as all that. If the stocks become illegal or heavily regulated, what do we do about the zillion or so already out there?
ReplyDeleteIf fitting a Bump stock makes an otherwise legal gun an illegal machine gun, again, what do we do about the ones already out there.
The bump stock was originally approved as an aid to the handicapped to assist them in shooting. Banning the stocks would then be a violation of the Americans with disabilities act. Now what?
The SIG brace was the thing approved to help disabled people shoot, not bump-fire stocks.
DeleteI've suggested that making a bump-fire an AOW as part of a deal to "ban" them and declaring an NFA amnesty for those extant would handle it without changing any laws.
The anti-gunners don't realize the implications of that amnesty, so we should go for it! How many DIAS did your dad bury in the yard?