Doing Something

The constant refrain that we’ve heard every minute of every day since Newtown from the gun prohibitionists, the politicians, and the mainstream media is that we must do something, we must “demand a plan”, we must pass a law. Josh Felker of LoneStar Handgun in Schertz, Texas decided to do something but it isn’t what the gun prohibitionists and their political and media allies are advocating.

Mr. Felker offered 400 slots in his Texas CHL classes free to teachers in Texas. The teachers in Texas took him up on the offer and all were booked within 24 hours.

From the San Antonio Express-News:


Middle school teacher Kim Williams traveled from Houston to cash in on Saturday’s free concealed handgun licensing course offered to educators after the mass shootings at a Connecticut elementary.

“I feel the need to be proactive,” Williams, 38, said during a break in the 10-hour class at LoneStar Handgun.

“I’m entrusted to the care and safety of over 100 students. I want to be prepared, if and when things go that way,” said the long-time employee of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.

Felker is trying to build momentum to get Texas laws and policies changed to allow teachers who are Texas CHL holders to be allowed to carry on campus. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is one of those who supports this move.

According to Felker’s site, Dury’s Gun Shop in San Antonio will pay for a CHL class for any Texas teacher who purchases a handgun from them. While I don’t know for sure, I imagine other Texas instructors and gun shops are making similar offers to Texas teachers. I certainly hope so.

Josh Felker and these teachers are making a positive contribution to keeping kids safer in Texas classrooms. Experience has shown that active shooters tend to be cowards and kill themselves when confronted by an armed person as was the case in the Portland, OR mall shooting.

Rare Events; Contrasting Statements

Just as it is rare to have multiple shootings, so too is it rare to have subway riders in New York City murdered by being pushed in front of an ongoing train. New York City has had two of these murders within the last month with the last one happening on Thursday. Both of these murders seem to have been committed by people with mental problems.

Given that multiple shootings as well as murders by being pushed on the tracks fall into the realm of “black swan events” – that is, very rare and very difficult to predict – it is interesting to compare the comments of Mayor Michael Bloomberg after the Newtown shooting with his comments on the latest subway pushing murder.

On the school shooting in Newtown, CT, Bloomberg said:

“With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still
almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten
class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners
learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too
soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After
Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For
every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of
them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt
condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to
send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful
action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the
rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the
White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a
national tragedy and it demands a national response.
My deepest
sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my
determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.”

Following the murder of Sunando Sen, an Indian immigrant who lived in Queens and had opened a printing business, Bloomberg had this to say:


Mayor Michael Bloomberg said commuters should “exercise care” after Thursday’s attack. He suggested little could be done, though, to prevent what he called a “rare occurrence.”


“It’s a very tragic thing,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

On Friday, in his weekly radio appearance on WOR-Radio’s John Gambling Show, Bloomberg discussed the subway murder among other things. You can listen to it here. It starts at about the 11:48 mark and ends at the 13:15 mark.

From my transcript of it:


Gambling: Unfortunately another push on the subway.

Bloomberg: It’s only two in, you know, a long period of time. (That) doesn’t help either person. I don’t know what happened here.

I was talking to somebody the other day. We used to incarcerate an awful lot of people who were mentally ill. The courts or the law was changed said, “No, you can’t do that because unless they are a danger to society, our laws protect you. And that’s fair enough. If you look at, you go out on Long Island there are a number of old psychiatric big and all of them now are empty and falling apart. They are derelict buildings and just the roofs are starting to cave-in. (They) can become dangerous.

Gambling: I read that the Governor is thinking of releasing even more people.

Bloomberg: I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him about it. But yeah, you know, it cost a lot and the trouble is you may incarcerate the handful of people who do something wrong but you’d also incarcerate an enormous number of people who will never do anything wrong. And the essence of America is unless you do something wrong, we don’t incarcerate you.

Right after this, Gambling asks him how he would integrate these thoughts with the Newtown shootings. The first thing out of his mouth is the comment that there will always be crazy people. He then goes into his usual harangue about guns, semi-auto firearms, standard capacity magazines, and how we need to ban them.

I find the contrasting statements interesting. On the one hand, Bloomberg demands immediate action for one rare event involving a mentally ill person while on the other hand he dismisses another event involving again a mentally ill person as a “rare occurrence” that not much could be done to prevent.

In both cases you have rare but deadly events involving mentally ill persons. Rationally, it is not the tool involved that is the causative factor of the event but rather the untreated mentally ill person. I think even Bloomberg understands this but for his own selfish and aggrandizing political aims chooses to ignore it.

Infographic On Standard Capacity Magazines

I came across this infographic on Facebook this morning. It is from the American Preppers Network. It examines how long it would take to get off 100 shots with various sizes of magazines assuming 3 seconds per change and 1 second per shot. Of course, both changes and aimed shots could be made in less time with practice but it is a starting point.

Use this link to view the videos mentioned in the infographic.

We Have Our Work Cut Out For Us



Bryon York, Chief Political Correspondent for The Washington Examiner, details a trip he took to Birmingham, Alabama over the holidays. He went to Hoover Tactical Firearms to shoot some of the more “controversial weapons”.

Disregarding his comments that the .45 ACP in the KRISS Vector is “hugely powerful”, I think his comments about his talks with friends and relatives about gun and magazine bans are instructive. These are the gun owners who must be made to understand that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Moreover, they need to realize that their scoped deer hunting rifles are nothing but “sniper rifles” to the gun prohibitionists.

From his comments:

Should guns like the KRISS be legal to buy?
Or, at least, should they be harder to buy and their magazine size
limited to, say, 10 rounds? Talking with relatives and friends, all of
whom own firearms, I didn’t sense much opposition to limiting the size
of magazines
. Nor did I sense much opposition to imposing the same sort
of background checks on people who buy guns at shows as are currently
imposed on people who buy them at licensed dealers like Hoover Tactical
Firearms.

As far as banning some types of guns
altogether, many point out that beyond their military styling, “assault
weapons” are basically semi-automatic rifles like zillions of other
semi-automatic rifles with wooden stocks and a traditional look. They’re
the same guns. Even so, I didn’t sense much opposition to banning the
sale of some types of rifles.

Even though as York reports that he didn’t sense much opposition to the bans, he did report that nobody thought that they would be effective in stopping another Newtown-type shooting or any mass shooting.

A Lump Of Coal From The UN

As a lump of coal for our Christmas stockings, the United Nations voted on Christmas Eve to restart debate on the Arms Trade Treaty.

The talks had collapsed in July when a consensus couldn’t be reached. It was felt at the time that this was due in part to President Obama not wanting the ATT hung around his neck going into the fall elections. Of course, this was denied by the US delegation.

That was then and this is now. According to Reuters, the US supported the resumption of talks.


But after Obama’s re-election last month, his administration joined other members of a U.N. committee in supporting the resumption of negotiations on the treaty.

That move was set in stone on Monday when the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly voted to hold a final round of negotiations on March 18-28 in New York.

The foreign ministers of Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan, Kenya and the United Kingdom – the countries that drafted the resolution – issued a joint statement welcoming the decision to resume negotiations on the pact.

“This was a clear sign that the vast majority of U.N. member states support a strong, balanced and effective treaty, which would set the highest possible common global standards for the international transfer of conventional arms,” they said.

There were 133 votes in favor, none against and 17 abstentions. A number of countries did not attend, which U.N. diplomats said was due to the Christmas Eve holiday.

The exact voting record was not immediately available, though diplomats said the United States voted ‘yes,’ as it did in the U.N. disarmament committee last month. Countries that abstained from last month’s vote included Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Belarus, Cuba and Iran.

 The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill says of the resumption of talks:

The move could intensify another high-profile fight between the
administration, which backs the treaty, and the National Rifle
Association (NRA) which says it will restrict the domestic sale of
firearms.

 As I see it, we will have both a domestic and international battle on our hands in the coming months. Now, more than ever, we need to be united and to deluge Congress with letters, faxes, and emails demanding no new gun control.

Possum Drop Will Continue In Brasstown

New Year’s Eve is almost upon us and Clay Logan has said that the annual New Year’s Eve Possum Drop in Brasstown, NC is a go. However, thanks to PETA and a foolish administrative law judge it will be a modified possum drop. 

From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Logan said Monday that he’s considering using a stuffed opossum or possibly a road-kill opossum.


“It
ain’t going to deter us from having the event,” said Logan. He expects
the party to draw about 3,000 people to his store in Brasstown, about
two hours west of Asheville.

There’s
plenty more to see than just the ’possum drop, added Logan. There will
be music by a country and bluegrass band, a tribute to the men and women
who serve in the military and a ceremonial firing of muzzleloaders by
the Brasstown Brigade.

Frankly, I hope they use a road-kill opossum for the event and then send it to Judge Fred Morrison as a memento of his ruling. 

Wise Words

Richard Pearson, Executive Director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, had this advice in his ISRA Thursday Bulletin. I consider them to be very wise words from someone who has been fighting in the trenches for gun rights for a long time.

As you are aware gun owners have been taking a pounding from the anti-gunners and their allies- the main stream media. Those two groups have declared war on gun owners and we will be maligned, degraded, demonized, and bullied in an effort to turn one group of gun owners against another. Don’t fall for it. I am a strong believer in the Farmer Doctrine.

The Farmer Doctrine was adopted at the first Gun Rights Policy Conference in 1985. The Farmer Doctrine is patterned after the NATO Doctrine. The Farmer Doctrine is as follows: Be it resolved that an attack one group of guns and gun owners shall be considered an attack on all guns and gun owners. Therefore we should all rise to the defense of each other.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

By now, most people have heard about the newspaper in New York that thought it was a good idea to publish the names and addresses of each and every pistol permit holder in Westchester and Rockland Counties on an interactive map.

Many are also aware that Christopher Fountain in his blog For What It’s Worth thought that turnabout was fair play and has published the home addresses of the publisher, editor, and damn near every reporter on the Journal News. This move has gotten a lot of attention starting with Instapundit and now CNN. Politico has a story on it here. You can see part of the CNN interview below.

Another blogger has taken this list of Journal News employees a step further and created an online map.

Frankly, I think each and every time some harebrained journalist or editor gets it into his or her head to publish the names of legal permit holders – whether for pistols or carry permits – we need to respond in kind.

Grandstanding

The 112th Congress will come to a close on January 3, 2013 when the 113th Congress is sworn into office. Thus, introducing a bill into the House of Representatives in mid-December is all about appearance and has nothing to do with substance. Of course this doesn’t stop politicians from doing just that knowing that these newly introduced bills will never get enacted.

A case in point are three bills introduced on December 18th, 19th, and 21st that all deal with some aspect of gun control or call for gun bans. This was just days after the shootings in Newtown, CT. The congressmen in question are all Democrats who will now be able to say “they did something” but it was those “evil Republicans in the pocket of the NRA” who refused to act on their bills.

The first bill, HR 6680, is by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL). Rush is a former Black Panther who’s claim to fame seems to be that he beat then-State Senator Barack Obama in the primary for the 1st Congressional District. The title of HR 6680 is “To provide for the implementation of a system of licensing for purchasers of certain firearms and for a record of sale system for those firearms, and for other purposes.” No other information is available on the bill and the text of it hasn’t been sent to the GPO. If any text is ever sent to them I’d be surprised.

The bill, HR 6685, is from Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) which would ban the FN Five-seveN pistol and its associated ammunition. Ostensibly the purpose of this ban is to protect law enforcement officers.

To protect the Nation’s law enforcement officers by banning the Five-seveN Pistol and 5.7 x 28mm SS190, SS192, SS195LF, SS196, and SS197 cartridges, testing handguns and ammunition for capability to penetrate body armor, and prohibiting the manufacture, importation, sale, or purchase of such handguns or ammunition by civilians.

Again, like with Rep. Bobby Rush, no text has been received by the Government Printing Office and none probably will be received. It is a bill for show and not meant to actually be enacted.

The final bill was introduced by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY). HR 6704 would “reauthorize the ban on undetectable firearms”. While I don’t know how you would create an “undetectable firearm”, Rep. Israel must have some special knowledge that I don’t possess. Otherwise why would he seek to ban firearms that don’t currently exist? I can’t read the text of the bill to get some idea as – again – it doesn’t exist.

While this end of the session grandstanding is not limited to anti-gun Democrats, most of the other bills concern stuff like the naming of post offices or federal buildings.The real threats will come in January when the gun prohibitionists such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) start introducing their new bills.