Not Smart Business (Corrected)

The Illinois State Rifle Association issued the following urgent correction this afternoon regarding the benefit car wash:

URGENT ALERT: CORRECTION TO EARLIER ALERT

On June 5, 2018, the Chicago Tribune’s Naperville Sun ran a story in which the leader of a west suburban gun control organization reported that she was holding a car wash to benefit gun control behind the Bill Kay Chevrolet auto dealership. Naturally, the wording of the article would lead readers to believe that Bill Kay was affiliated with the benefit car wash.

Bill Kay Chevrolet has since contacted the ISRA to report that the dealership is not affiliated with the car wash. Likewise, the Tribune has, on June 11, re-released their story with clarifying language that accurately identifies the location of the benefit car wash.

Now that the Tribune has corrected its article, the ISRA is advising its members that the Bill Kay Auto group is no way involved in the car wash and that gun owners should feel free to keep Bill Kay in mind when shopping for a new or used vehicle.

Bill Kay Auto Group is not so dumb after all. They will NOT be the sponsor of the car wash and is not involved in any way.

Nonetheless, the neo-Red Guard aka Hogg and Co. is coming to Illinois.

Original post below

If you were a gun owner in the Chicagoland area would you really want to support a chain of car dealers that is sponsoring a benefit for anti-gun group? I didn’t think so.

The Illinois State Rifle Association sent out an alert about a benefit car wash being held by Bill Kay Chevrolet for Friends Who March of Naperville, Illinois. The dealership is part of the Bill Kay Auto Group which has a number of dealerships around the Chicago area.

From ISRA:

A west suburban auto dealership will be holding a benefit “car wash” to support gun control legislation that, if passed, promises to empty your gun safe. Bill Kay Chevrolet, located on Ogden Avenue in Lisle, will be the site of the June 16th car wash. The event will reportedly kick off at Noon and end around 3:00 PM.

The beneficiary of the Bill Kay event is a cell of extremist gun controllers based in Naperville, IL. The radical group is known for organizing harassment activities against attendees of the DuPage Gun Show and for inciting near-riot conditions during a raucous anti-constitution, anti-freedom demonstration in Downers Grove last March. The gun control group has, as its objective, the banning and confiscation of your lawfully-acquired firearms.

As law-abiding gun owners, we shouldn’t be supporting businesses or other organizations that support and sustain attacks on our 2nd Amendment rights. The Bill Kay Auto Group has chosen to align itself with the gun controllers in their war against your rights as an American citizen. Bill Kay Auto Group’s overt support for gun control should carry consequences.

The Bill Kay Auto Group operates a number of dealerships throughout the Chicagoland area. Those dealerships represent a variety of brands – not just Chevrolet. So, the next time you go shopping for a vehicle, or when booking auto maintenance, remember that Bill Kay is not your friend. Vote with your feet – shop elsewhere.

The Chicago Tribune has more on the event and the featured guests of Friends Who March:

The Naperville town hall is one of the 50 stops on the 20-state Road to Change tour being conducted by David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin and about two dozen other students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who experienced the mass shooting at their school in which 17 people were killed in February.

The students reached out to Jax West, president of Friends Who March, to organize a town hall event in the western suburbs because she helped host a March For Our Lives event in Downers Grove…

In addition to the town hall, West is planning a voter drive during a car wash Downers Grove North High School students are hosting with the Parkland students from noon to 3 p.m. June 16 behind the Bill Kay Chevrolet, near Ogden Avenue and Interstate 355 in Lisle.

The League of Women Voters of Downers Grove, Lisle and Woodridge will register people to vote at the event.

The Road to Change tour officially kicks off June 15 in Chicago, where Parkland students be joining a Peace March led by students from St. Sabina Academy.

There is no word if Father Pfleger of St. Sabina’s and his armed guard will attend the car wash or “Peace March”. Also there is no word whether David Hogg and his neo-Red Guard minions will make a pilgrimage to the grave of Saul Alinsky while in the Chicago area.

People v Berrezueta – More Knife Law Lunacy From New York

The New York Court of Appeals is the highest appellate court in the state of New York. They decided a case last week that is very problematic to everyone who owns an assisted-opening knife in the state. In the case of People v. Berrezueta they declared in a 6-1 decision that a spring-assisted opening knife is a switchblade within the definition of the New York’s penal code. The dissent by Judge Jenny Rivera disagreed strongly and pointed out the deficiencies in the majority’s argument.

Doug Ritter has more in an alert he sent out this morning:

URGENT New York State WARNING
Are Assisted-Openers Now Illegal Switchblades ?


As if New York wasn’t already a confusing legal and regulatory nightmare for honest, law-abiding knife owners, the highest court in the state just upheld, in a one paragraph opinion, the conviction of a person in possession of an assisted opening (spring-assisted) folding knife under the theory that it was an illegal switchblade knife under New York law.


The decision was overwhelming, 6 to 1, but it’s worth noting the excellent dissent by Judge Jenny Rivera which is detailed, analytical, logical and very well-reasoned.


Click here to read the decision including her brilliant dissent.


Assisted opening folding knives are widely and routinely carried by millions of law abiding individuals, and given the momentous nature of this decision, certainly affecting hundreds of thousands of pocket knife owners in New York State, a review of the briefs suggests that the seriousness of the issues at stake was not presented to the court. The prosecution fundamentally mischaracterized the nature of the knife as being a switchblade. The significant and fundamental differences between a switchblade and the assisted-opening folder the defendant was carrying were not before the Court.


In addition to completely redefining what a knife’s handle is, essentially eliminating the difference between the handle and the blade, the Court disregarded the fundamental difference in how the two types of knives operate – switchblades being automatic (an essential element of the definition) while assisted-openers are not.


Given that this confusion goes against clear historical precedent and that nobody in the real world is likely to interpret that statute in that manner, it creates a trap for all knife owners who would rationally never consider an assisted-opening folder to be a switchblade, especially if they were intimately familiar with plain wording of New York’s switchblade statue.

265.00 Weapons Crimes – Firearms and Other Dangerous Weapons
Definitions


4. “Switchblade Knife” means any knife which has a blade which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in the handle of the knife. (emphasis ours)

Regardless of whether we win our current civil rights case against New York City and District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. over their unconstitutionally vague gravity knife prosecutions of those carrying common folding knives, the hundreds of thousands of knife owners who possess an assisted-opening folding knife anywhere in New York state could now be liable to being prosecuted for simply possessing a per se (inherently) illegal switchblade under §265.01, which is a serious crime, a fourth degree misdemeanor with a potential penalty of a year in jail. And, as we have seen far too often in our Federal gravity knife case, anyone who has had a prior conviction, even decades ago, is likely to have the charge against them upgraded to a felony with potentially years of jail time and loss of civil rights.


Actually carrying an assisted-opener will certainly raise the likelihood of arrest and prosecution.


At this juncture we must warn anyone living in New York State, or who visits or travels through New York State, that you risk arrest and jail if you carry an assisted-opening folding knife. Retailers within New York State may want to consider their potential criminal liability in continuing to sell assisted-opening knives.


We’ll certainly be looking to find a solution to this problematic decision, but for now, discretion is the better part of valor with regards to assisted-opening folders in New York State.


And, just to be clear, this assisted-opener issue that covers the entire state of New York is entirely separate from New York City’s gravity knife arrests and prosecutions; as well as New York City’s administrative code prohibiting open carry of a knife (including being clipped to a pocket or “printing”) and its under 4-inch blade length limit. Details at: https://kniferights.org/legislative-update/new-york-city-administrative-code-knives/

Really, YouTube? Brownells Offends Your Sensitivities? (Updated – Restored)

Brownells is one of the most mainstream of companies in the firearms industry. Thus it is very surprising that their YouTube channel was terminated without warning or notice at around 2am this Saturday morning.

WTF?!

Here is what they posted on Facebook:

Brownells’ YouTube channel has been terminated without warning or notice.

If you’re opposed to the continued attack on our community’s First and Second Amendment rights, please contact
GOOGLE: 650-253-0000 OPTION 5 FOR YOUTUBE M – F

MESSAGE YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE:
https://twitter.com/YouTube
https://twitter.com/rkyncl?lang=en
https://www.facebook.com/youtube/

USE “SEND FEEDBACK” AT BOTTOM OF YOUR PAGE to message YT

Thank you! And as always, we appreciate your support.

Among the groups that Brownells has provided support include both Operation Blazing Sword and Black Guns Matter. Is YouTube that scared of gays and African-Americans exercising their god-given right to self-defense and their Second Amendment rights?

More on this from the Gun Collective:

We are in a culture war and the other side wants us dead. I mean that both figuratively and literally. Terminating Brownells YouTube channnel is another shot across the bow in this culture war. Take a few minutes and letting YouTube know your opinion of this.

UPDATE:


The Brownells YouTube channel has been restored. There is still no explanation why it was taken down.

Brownells issued this message on their Facebook page:

Brownells’ YouTube account has been restored!


We CANNOT thank you ALL enough for your shares, reposts, retweets and positive comments!


We are beyond proud to have the finest group of customers and supporters anywhere.


Thank you again! 🇺🇸👍

Headline Of The Day

The headline of the day comes from an online story in American Handgunner magazine.

American Handgunner Guide To Picking Your Nose

It actually has nothing to do with your body parts and everything to do with the shape of your handgun bullets. Stuff like wadcutter, semi-wadcutter, flat nose, and round nose bullets when you are talking about cast bullets with others for jacketed bullets.

As Tank Hoover notes in this article:

As you can see, a lot of thought is involved in picking your nose for getting the best results. Besides nose style, we’ve yet to discuss alloy hardness and bullet lubes for cast bullets. Then there’s the choice of plain base or gas checked bottoms. Powder Coating, of which I’m a firm believer in its attributes, is another option.

Jacketed bullets have far less options than their cast brethren. Besides nose-styles, cannelures are about the only other option. Cannelures are useful for crimping bullets into place, while non-cannelure are used for taper crimped bullets used in semi-autos, where the cartridge seats on the case neck.

Who would have thought there was so much involved in picking your nose, let alone, the right bullet, to get the results you want and need? There’s nothing wrong with being picky — if you’re after certain results.

It is a good article with a great headline.

National Negroni Week

As Professor David Yamane reminded me in a text a few days ago, this is National Negroni Week. For those that wonder just what the heck is a “negroni”, it is a simple cocktail made with three ingredients: Campari, sweet vermouth, and gin. There are variations and my favorite is the Boulvardier which substitutes bourbon for the gin.

So in honor of National Negroni Week and in memory of the late Anthony Bourdain, here is how he makes the Negroni.

Sign A Birthday Card For Gabby?

Nothing says cult of personality quite like being asked to sign a “birthday card” for the namesake of a gun prohibitionist organization. I don’t ever seem to remember the NRA asking me to sign a birthday card for Wayne LaPierre nor the Second Amendment Foundation asking me to sign a birthday card for Alan Gottlieb. Hell, even the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic) doesn’t ask people to sign a birthday card for Joshua Horwitz.

When all your gun control proposals do nothing to stop the criminal misuse of a firearm, you have to resort to something. In this case, it is playing on the cult of personality that is being built around the tragic shooting of Gabby Giffords and murder of innocents. Never mind that the murderer passed a FBI background check to purchase his firearm and that the Democratic sheriff of Pima County, AZ looked the other way more than once about his behavior.

It’s just, I don’t know, kinda pathetic.

  All that is to say, Gabby loves receiving those notes of support. And
since tomorrow is her birthday, we were hoping you can sign a card we
created for her before the big day. What do you think?
Thank you for your continued support of Gabby throughout the years. I know that it means the world to her.

D-Day Plus 74 Years

D-Day or the Allied invasion of the beaches of German-occupied Normandy took place 74 years ago today on June 6, 1944. To kids like me born in the 50s and who grew up in the 60s, D-Day wasn’t the distant past. Our parents came of age during WWII and had passed that knowledge of the war on to us.

While searching for something to use for this blog post, I came across this first-ever documentary about D-Day. It had been put together by the Public Relations Division of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) for viewing by military leadership. Sometime after that, it was deemed classified and forgotten. Archivists rediscovered this documentary when they found films of in the Eisenhower Library back in 2014.

As an unrelated aside, this morning I was going through my father’s military records and found that he was sent to Korea on June 6, 1957. It is just an interesting coincidence with no relevance to this.

Lawsuit Against Deerfield (Illinois) AWB Makes Fox And Friends

Richard Pearson, Executive Director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, was interviewed this morning on Fox and Friends regarding the lawsuit that ISRA and the Second Amendment Foundation have filed against the Village of Deerfield, Illinois. The lawsuit seeks a restraining order against the village’s recently enacted assault weapons (sic) and high capacity (sic) magazine ban on the grounds that village doesn’t have the authority to do so under Illinois state law.

You can see the video of the interview here.

GRNC Press Conference In Raleigh On Tuesday

The Demanding Moms can gets lots of turnout to their events because of stay-at-home moms, retirees, and kept women. Well, I don’t know about the kept women part but I think the first two are pretty accurate.

Grass Roots North Carolina is holding a press conference in conjunction with Rep. Larry Pittman (R-Cabarrus) on school safety. They need – WE NEED – as many people who can to attend that press conference and especially teachers who want the ability to be armed to protect the school children under their care.

The full release is below:

PRESS CONFERENCE:
SCHOOL
SELF-DEFENSE ACT



Children will only be safe when adults are permitted to protect
them …

Tomorrow (Tuesday, 6/5), the sponsors of the “School Self-Defense Act” (HB 1039)
will be publicly introducing the bill, and
you’re invited. GRNC was involved in creating this bill as well as
directing input to the offices of the Speaker and the House Rules Chair,
and
we’re excited about its introduction. This is GRNC’s answer to all of the counterproductive, and worse, gun-grabbing
“solutions” proposed by the left
. More press conference details below.

Parents and especially
teachers,
please attend this press conference



Please RSVP using the
following
email address:
directorofdevelopment@grnc.org




Note: Signs are
not allowed in the Legislative Building.


Calling All Teachers and Parents

It is very important that
you attend this press conference. Seeing you there will help the General Assembly members recognize that the people are serious about this, and
your presence may even help the politicians develop spines
. Please see below for details.


PRESS RELEASE:
LEGISLATION & PRESS
CONFERENCE DETAILS


Bill Provides

Active Shooter Protection for Students

Legislators herald introduction of
House Bill 1039: “School Self-Defense Act”


Press conference:

When:  Tuesday, June 5 at 11:00 A.M. EDT

Where: NC General Assembly, Legislative Building Rm. 1328, 16. W. Jones St., Raleigh, NC

Who:    Representatives Larry Pittman, Michael Speciale, John Blust and Mark
Brody

To deter active
shooter scenarios and better protect North Carolina students, North Carolina House Representatives Larry Pittman, Michael Speciale, John Blust
and Mark Brody
have introduced HB 1039: “School Self-Defense Act,” which is patterned after the Department of
Homeland Security’s highly successful “Federal Flight Deck Officer” program and would:
  • Create a “Volunteer School Faculty Guardian” program for full or part-time
    school faculty members who have concealed handgun permits and wish to carry firearms to protect students;
  • Create an active shooter training program for School Faculty Guardians; and
  • Allow school systems to “opt out” should they choose to do so.

Teachers to speak
out in favor of HB 1039:

The June 5 press conference will
allow an opportunity for teachers in favor of arming faculty members, whose voices have long been stifled, to be heard.

Said
GRNC president Paul Valone:

Too
often, politicians have wrongly equated
protecting school children with the loss of individual freedom. GRNC
thanks these courageous legislators for promoting a solution, already
operating
successfully in Ohio and elsewhere, which will deter mass killings,
allow volunteer faculty members to provide a last layer of defense for
school
children, and preserve our Constitutional liberties.


IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!



  • EMAIL THE SPEAKER AND THE RULES COMMITTEE
    CHAIRMAN
    . Use the
    copy/paste details provided under ‘Deliver This Message‘ to insist on a hearing for this bill.
  • ATTEND TUESDAY’S PRESS
    CONFERENCE
    :
    As soon as you can, please contact GRNC at this email address, directorofdevelopment@grnc.org, and let us know you’re
    coming
    .
    More details below.

    This
    Tuesday, June 5, at 10:30 AM, meet GRNC representatives here:

    Legislative Building
    Room 1328

    16 W. Jones Street
    Raleigh, NC
    27601

    A couple
    of notes:

    It’s probably best to arrive in Raleigh by 10:00 AM to make sure you find parking. Please “dress for
    the press.” Professional attire preferred. Firearms are not allowed on the grounds of the General Assembly.
    Signs are not allowed in the Legislative Building.

DELIVER THIS MESSAGE

Send to:  Tim.Moore@ncleg.net; David.Lewis@ncleg.net

Suggested Subject: “The School Self-Defense Act Must Receive a Hearing”  

 
Dear Speaker Moore and Chairman Lewis:

I am writing to insist on a hearing for the “School Self-Defense
Act” (HB 1039).

I
was quite elated when I heard that several courageous legislators have
stepped forward
to develop a practical and effective solution to the school safety
issues we are currently facing. It’s about time we stepped out of the
endless cycle
of rhetoric, and took actual steps to defend our children. This bill, HB
1039, does just that. 


Due to the potentially imminent
nature of this problem, time is short. Please do not position yourself
as the one
standing between school children and their safety. Rather, make sure the
School Self-Defense Act receives a hearing immediately. NC Parents and
Teachers need this, school children need it even more, and that’s why
I’m insisting on it.


I will be monitoring your actions on this issue through alerts from Grass Roots North Carolina. 

Respectfully,

We Don’t Want To Be California

With apologies to my good friends in the gun rights movement from California, we don’t want to be you. You have things we in North Carolina just don’t want and this includes your California Handgun Roster. This should be patently obvious to every legislator, Democrat or Republican, in the North Carolina General Assembly but sadly it is not.

Representatives Verla Insko (D-Orange), Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford), and Marcia Morey (D-Durham) have introduced HB 1060 which would establish a handgun roster for North Carolina. Actually, it goes further and straight out adopts the California Handgun Roster in its totality.

Development; Prohibition. – The Department shall develop a roster of handguns
determined not to be unsafe based off the California Roster of Handguns Certified for Sale.
Except as provided in subsections (d) and (e) of this section, it is unlawful for any person, firm,
or corporation to (i) manufacture, sell, give, loan, import, or otherwise transfer a handgun that is
not listed on the roster as of January 1 of the calendar year in which the handgun is to be sold,
given, loaned, imported, or otherwise transferred or (ii) own or possess a handgun that is not
listed on the roster as of January 1 of the applicable calendar year, unless the person, firm, or
corporation lawfully owned or possessed the handgun prior to that date.

It goes without saying that this is nothing but a political stunt by these anti-gun Democrats as the General Assembly has a Republican super-majority. While I am pissed at the Republican leadership for dragging their feet on permitless concealed carry, I am reasonably sure that they won’t let any gun control bill like this see the light of day.

Of the three representatives, only Pricey Harrison is a North Carolinian born and bred. Insko was born in Arkansas and grew up in California while Morey is from Illinois and educated there. Morey, it should be noted, was appointed and not elected to the House as she replaced a representative who had died. Of note about Harrison, she is the great-granddaughter of Julian Price who founded the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company which through mergers is now known as Lincoln Financial. Her grandparents were well-known philantropists in Greensboro. My point is that Harrison grew up with a silver spoon in her mouth and somewhere along the way adopted the leftist orientation that many of those who never had to struggle seem to adopt.