Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Reading this is time well spent

It's heinously long for a reference post on someone else s blog, so I'll post a couple hard hitting paragraphs....please go to the link and read it in it's entirety.

A Culture of Entrenched Cowardice

I don’t claim to know the true motivations of everyone who opposes armed citizens’ response to mass shooters. But I do know that this mindset certainly can be a cynical, self-serving way to disguise blatant fear of taking action as “good sense”. I fear that this mindset is changing us from a brave culture, a culture where people are expected to defend the defenseless, to a culture of deeply entrenched cowardice. A culture where outright refusal to defend even one’s own family is celebrated as a mark of high intelligence.

The realities of sudden violence against private citizens always point to an inescapable conclusion: the only way to protect citizens from violence is to let them protect themselves. I say this as a police officer who spent years training for and teaching other police officers how to respond to mass shootings. Anyone who thinks we police can be everywhere, or can respond within seconds to any public place under attack, are fooling themselves.


I would like to offer a deal to those who refuse to carry a weapon, yet insult and deride those who do. I won’t hold your decision, which has no bearing on how I should live, against you. I won’t speak badly of you. If I happen to be near you and the unthinkable happens, I will risk my life to defend you. If I’m mortally wounded and have time to recognize my impending death, I won’t feel anger over dying to defend someone who wouldn’t defend himself.

Your part of the deal? Shut up. Stop speaking out against those who would face mortal danger to defend themselves, their families and you. Stop telling good, intelligent people not to fight back against evil. Stop trying to convince people that if police can’t protect them, they therefore shouldn’t protect themselves. If you have zero experience in the subject, stop spreading your tactical wisdom, gained through years of sitting in classrooms and discussing with likeminded friends how stupid gun owners are, about what a gunfight is really like. Stop citing Mother Jones “studies” and 20/20 “videotaped experiments” that were specifically engineered to convince people not to defend themselves. Stop telling me that cowardly mass shooters with no skill or training are unstoppable monsters who no citizen should even attempt to fight, but brave law-abiding citizens with training and good sense are powerless. Stop telling me it’s better to let a childish coward keep shooting at me than to shoot back. Stop projecting your passive timidity onto others. Stop hiding your cowardice behind a veil of smug superiority. People see through it.


Chris Hernandez

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Local victories add up......

to winning the war against firearms prohibition.

SAF WINS HUGE VICTORY FOR CARRY IN ILLINOIS

The Second Amendment Foundation has won a huge victory for the right to bear arms outside the home, with a ruling in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that declares the right to self-defense is “broader than the right to have a gun in one’s home.

The case of Moore v. Madigan, with Judge Richard Posner writing for the majority, gives the Illinois legislature 180 days to "craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment…on the carrying of guns in public.”

“We are very happy with Judge Posner’s majority opinion,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This is a victory for Illinois citizens who have been long denied a right recognized in the other 49 states; to have the means necessary for self-defense outside the home.

“In the broader sense,” he added, “this ruling affirms that the right to keep and bear arms, itself, extends beyond the boundary of one’s front door. This is a huge victory for the Second Amendment.”

“The Second Amendment,” Judge Posner writes, “states in its entirety that ‘a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ The right to ‘bear’ as distinct from the right to ‘keep’ arms is unlikely to refer to the home. To speak of ‘bearing’ arms within one’s home would at all times have been an awkward usage. A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home."

Later, Judge Posner adds, “To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.”

“That the court will give Illinois lawmakers six months to craft a law allowing carry outside the home recognizes that the right to bear arms means what it says,” Gottlieb concluded. “The ball is now in the Legislature’s court, and we eagerly wait to see how well they can live up to their responsibility.”




Westford Selectmen Withdraw Proposal To Ban Assault Weapons

A thunderous round of applause and a standing ovation greeted the news Wednesday night that a proposed town bylaw to restrict some assault weapons was going to be officially withdrawn.
Westford Vice Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Robert Jeffries

The overwhelming majority of the close to 400 people who packed a special meeting of the Westford Board of Selectmen opposed the idea.

The man who originally proposed it told the crowd the debate had not gone as he had hoped.

Vice Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Robert Jeffries said, “This was meant to be a discussion within the town of Westford, a community discussion that’s gotten way, way beyond that. We’re not really getting the discussion we want.”


After the meeting, Jeffries added that he had hoped he and his town would not be alone in an effort to restrict assault weapons and high-capacity firearms from the town.

“I thought there would be a [negative] reaction,” Jeffries said. “But I also thought maybe some other towns in Massachusetts might have also tried something similar and none of them did. So it left us isolated as the only ones.”

Westford residents at the meeting felt a sense of relief.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Photo addendum to yesterday's post


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Asinine advice from a fool

Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Americans don't need semi-automatic weapons to protect their homes because a couple of blasts from a shotgun will scare off intruders.

"Buy a shotgun, buy a shotgun," the vice president encouraged those worried about defending themselves. He was speaking in an online video as part of a Facebook town hall hosted by Parents Magazine on the administration's strategy for reducing gun violence, which he has led at the direction of President Barack Obama.

Biden said he keeps two shotguns and shells locked up at home and he's told his wife, Jill, to use them if she needs protection. He presumably was speaking about before he became vice president, a position that gives the couple full-time Secret Service protection.

"I said, 'Jill, if there's ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony ... take that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,'" Biden said. "You don't need an AR-15. It's harder to aim, it's harder to use and in fact, you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself."
Yahoo

Sure. Makes perfect sense to me.

An AR style platform is hard to use....even though it's one of the best selling platforms due to it's ease of use.

And when you are being targeted by criminals, what better way to defend yourself than to expend the ammunition in your firearm into the air. Surely, criminals won't know that your empty, even though they hear no pump reloading.

And my favorite meme.....you don't need.......

Until you're being assaulted or targeted, you don't know how many rounds you'll need.......and the VP, comfortably ensconced behind Secret Service security at the Naval Observatory, most certainly doesn't know what you need.

The old adage still remains true.......nobody ever walks away from a gunfight thinking "I wish I didn't have that much ammunition with me".

Asses, clowns and fools.......

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Went looking for Zeus....he wasn't home

Hiked the Mt Olympus Trail [Wa'ahila Ridge] on Oahu this morning. I got my money's worth on this one.

Fairly technical in some places....hand over hand on rocks and roots, and in one location, a rope that is almost essential for making it to the top of one rise.

View of Honolulu from Mt Olympus Trail
  
View of Diamond Head
Canopy from above
Found my roots....they suck when wet
This is a trail....?

Taking a Stand

Colorado ammo magazine maker Magpul threatens to leave state over gun bill

Since the article employs typical media speak [ignorance of firearms], I will happily repost Rational Gun's take on the issue:

Magpul has made it crystal clear that Magpul will uproot and leave the state if Colorado bans standard capacity magazines and enacts legislation to serialize and track said magazines in the state.  As in Magpul understands that gun owners in other states won't buy from a manufacturer so hypocritical as to make high capacity mags in a state where said magazines are banned.  Also, one gets the impression that the leadership at Magpul absolutely agrees with these sentiments.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Remington pack up and leave after Governor Cuomo refused to meet with Remington factory employees before he saved the children of New York State from 10 round magazines by limiting magazines in New York to seven round magazines (those three rounds are deadly!). 
 

Seriously, it's time for the other manufacturers to sack up and follow Magpul's lead.  Les Baer fled Illinois (the most broke state in the country but IL's unions and politics have nothing to do with that, right?).  Colt has already built a facility in Florida.  Fears are mounting in Hartford, CT as some folks suddenly realize the real cost of unions and anti gun state governments.  Armalite is fielding offers from three other states to leave.  Now if DSA and Springfield leaves, maybe Illinois legislators will join Colorado politicians Daniel Kagan and Joe Salazar in being the true shining lights of genuine money grubbing hypocrisy in this uncertain age.

And Magpul's statement:

In addition to the national battle to protect our firearms rights, many states are currently engaged in their own fights. Here in CO, a state with a strong heritage of firearm and other personal freedoms, we are facing some extreme challenges to firearms rights. We have been engaged in dialogue with legislators here presenting our arguments to stop legislation from even being introduced, but our efforts did not deter those of extreme views.

After the NRAs visit last week, several anti-freedom bills were introduced by CO legislators, and a very aggressive timeline has been set forth in moving these bills forward.

The bills include:
HB 1229, Background checks for Gun Transfers--a measure to prohibit private sales between CO residents, and instead require a full FFL transfer, including a 4473.

HB 1228, Payment for Background Checks for Gun Transfers-- a measure that would require CO residents to pay for the back logged state-run CBI system (currently taking 3 times the federally mandated wait time for checks to occur) instead of using the free federal NICS checks.

And finally, HB 1224, Prohibiting Large Capacity Ammunition Magazines--a measure that bans the possession, sale, or transfer of magazines over 10 round capacity. The measures and stipulations in this bill would deprive CO residents of the value of their private property by prohibiting the sale or transfer of all magazines over 10 rounds. This bill would also prohibit manufacture of magazines greater than 10 rounds for commercial sale out of the state, and place restrictions on the manufacture of military and law enforcement magazines that would cripple production.

We'd like to ask all CO residents to please contact your state legislators and the members of the Judiciary Committee and urge them to kill these measures in committee, and to vote NO if they reach the floor.

We also ask you to show your support for the 2nd Amendment at the Capitol on Tuesday, Feb 12, for the magazine ban committee hearing and Wednesday,
Feb 13, for the hearing on the other measures.

Due to the highly restrictive language in HB 1224, if passed, and we remained here, this measure would require us to cease PMAG production on July 1, 2013.

In short, Magpul would be unable to remain in business as a CO company, and the over 200 jobs for direct employees and nearly 700 jobs at our subcontractors and suppliers would pick up and leave CO. Due to the structure of our operations, this would be entirely possible, hopefully without significant disruption to production.

The legislators drafting these measures do so in spite of the fact that nothing they are proposing will do anything to even marginally improve public safety in CO, and in fact, will leave law-abiding CO residents less able to defend themselves, strip away rights and property from residents who have done nothing wrong, and send nearly 1000 jobs and millions in tax revenue out of the state.

We like CO, we want to continue to operate in CO, but most of all, we want CO to remain FREE.

Please help us in this fight, and let your voices be heard! 

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Games People Play

Colorado Democrats want gun manufacturers held liable for crimes committed with their guns

The proposal would hold manufacturers of firearms, as well as sellers, responsible for crimes committed with those guns. The measure apparently conflicts with an existing federal law, but Democrats in the state reportedly say they want to get that federal law repealed.

Republicans say the gun liability measure would effectively ban those weapons because manufacturers and retailers would be afraid to sell them.


Politicians are defining unlawful actions using legal objects that they cannot begin to define. And the useful idiots are allowing it to happen, because it is occurring at present, to a particular subject they wish to demonize. They are subverting reason and effecting Constitutional and free market ramifications by criminalizing a commercial entity for manufacturing a legal item, that is in turn used unlawfully by a third, fourth or fifth party.

The term assault rifle can likely be traced back to the inception of the Sturmgewehr in 1944. The term has been used sporadically until the last couple of decades, and has been defined by the military, as covering those rifles that are either belt fed or are enabled with an automatic or burst firing function. Circa 1989, gun control advocates adopted the term to apply it to semi-automatic rifles in their effort to demonize them in the public eye. Prior to this reframing, any weapon that could be categorized as an assault rifle, were weapons already restricted and regulated by the NFA. This fact was not lost on some, who then interjected the term assault weapon into the debate.

Harkening back to the previous facts noted about semi-automatic rifles being no different functionally from each other, politicians and gun control advocates were compelled to itemize cosmetic differences in their attempt to brand the term military style in their campaign of demonization....again, of an inanimate object. I've asked numerous times on several forums, for anyone to explain what added lethality the features listed in proposals for banning these rifles; rifles that are obviously simply scary looking to some people. In response to that specific query, I received crickets.

But politicians continue to press, even while tacitly acknowledging the gaps in simple logic. I present NY Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, a strong advocate of Gov Cuomo's gun control bills.

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol, who helped negotiate and push through Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s bill, acknowledged that there’s some misunderstanding in the public about what defines an assault weapon.

“It’s a confusing term,” the Brooklyn Democrat said.

Lentol said part of the confusion about the term “assault weapon” comes from people using the term interchangeably with “assault rifle.”

An assault rifle is an automatic weapon or one that can switch between single fire and multiple bursts that the military would use, Lentol said.


The accurate term of semi-automatic rifle doesn't convey the same amount of manufactured fear; while these same elected representatives have repeatedly shown on national television, they they often don't even understand the difference between automatic and semi-automatic.

They have done this with magazines and capacity as well. They have taken standard capacity magazines, designed as such for the weapons that accept them, as high capacity....simply because the number of rounds exceeds that which they have decided you need. Never mind the logical leap going from 7-10 round capacity being acceptable - to 20 rounds being unacceptable. Simple redefinition for political purposes.....again. The underlying excuse comes in the form of the State deciding what you need. Is anyone comfortable with that? The government arbitrarily deciding how much of a lawful item you need? I obviously know that it doesn't bother many in regards to firearms and rounds, because they don't seem terribly invested in the sovereign right of self defense and the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But think about that precedent for a moment.

If they have no issue with legislation being enacted solely on the political defining of lawful items; redefining that impacts one of our Constitutional rights.....I expect not to hear them complain when government redefinition impacts another Constitutional right, or even an issue that they hold sacred.

Lord knows I don't want to be accused of treading the slippery slope....but have you stopped to consider just why their is such an impetus on banning these weapons, when they are used in an overwhelming minority of cases of gun violence? Even VPOTUS acknowledges that the current legislation will not yield a tangible effect: “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to 1,000 a year from what it is now,”

Because of it's profound succinctness, I will include the editorial directly below Biden's quote at the link:

Where there is a lack of integrity, there can be no objective rule of law.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Lightfighter Quote of the Day

Shamelessly lifting this from a Brother at Lightfighter.net, because he said it far better than I could have.

Citizens must not be stripped of the ability to effectively counter criminal violence.

Because, the armed citizen faces the VERY SAME criminals that police face. The only difference is that police, because they are more often called TO the incident, face these criminals more regularly. Understand, though, criminals do not prey on police, but instead, they victimize the public.


Word.