I’ve written about Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire in the past. The film’s producer Kris Koenig has released a new trailer for the film that includes some of the interviews he has conducted with the production funding raised using Kickstarter.
I think the new trailer is quite powerful and I can’t wait to see the final film.
Jim Baker, the NRA-ILA Director of Federal Affairs, represented the NRA at the meeting last week with Vice-President Joe Biden and his task force. During that meeting, Baker emphasized the need to enforce existing gun laws. One of the items he mentioned was the low prosecution rate for falsifying answers on the ATF Form 4473.
“And to your point, Mr. Baker, regarding the lack of prosecutions on
lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to
prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that
answers a question inaccurately.”
The Daily Caller article summarized the lack of prosecutions:
In 2010, prosecutors considered just 22 cases of information falsification, according to a 2012 report to the Department of Justice by the Regional Justice Information Service. Forty additional background-check cases ended up before prosecutors for reasons related to unlawful gun possession.
In all, prosecutors pursued just 44 of those 62 cases. More than 72,600 applications were denied on the basis of a background check.
Bear in mind that each false answer on a Form 4473 carries a penalty of up to 10 years in Federal prison.
It isn’t just falsifications of Form 4473 that the Obama Administration seems not want to prosecute. In the table below, the number of firearms cases files and the number of convictions in US District Court is summarized by fiscal year for the period FY 2001 to FY 2010. A Federal fiscal year begins on October 1st of the preceding year. Thus, FY 2001 began on October 1, 2000. FY 2010 is the latest year in which statistics are available.
|
FY
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2001
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2002
|
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
|
Cases Filed
|
5,875
|
7,412
|
9,111
|
9,403
|
9,008
|
8,472
|
8,103
|
7,891
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7,650
|
7,089
|
|
Convictions
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4,925
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5,563
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6,786
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7,889
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8,690
|
8,706
|
8,111
|
7,886
|
7,941
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7,642
|
|
Federal Firearms
Offenses, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, SUNY-Albany School of Criminal Justice |
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The number of cases brought involving violations of Federal firearms laws is currently at the lowest level since FY 2001. That year the responsibility was part Clinton and part Bush. It is obvious that US Attorneys in the Bush Administration took violation of firearms law more seriously than do the US Attorneys in the Obama Administration. Comparing the high year of prosecutions under Bush – FY 2004 – with the first full year under Obama – FY 2010 – prosecutions have dropped by 33%. This is for all firearms prosecutions which includes felon in possession among other things.
Jim Baker points out the disconnect between pushing new firearms laws when you don’t prosecute existing laws.
“We think it is problematic when the administration takes lightly the prosecutions under existing gun laws and yet does not seem to have a problem promoting a whole host of other gun laws,” Baker told TheDC.“If we are not going to enforce the laws that are on the books, it not only engenders disrespect for the law but it makes law-abiding gun owners wonder why we are going through this exercise we are going through now,” he added.
With an approximately 20,000 firearms laws already on the books in the United States, one more law passed won’t stop criminals. Some of the laws being promoted by the Obama Administration and the gun control forces in Congress would, however, make it harder for the average, law-abiding citizen to protect him or herself from the criminal class.
Is that what we really want criminal law to do? The answer is obviously a resounding no.
Jeff Quinn is back for the third and final day of the 2013 SHOT Show. He starts off his report with an interview with Mike Fifer, CEO of Ruger, who explains their fast and easy way to contact your representatives to say no new gun control. I think Ruger needs to be applauded for taking this stand. So far over 500,000 people have taken advantage of this tool in less than a week. Fifer is correct that we need to get this up to 20 million or more.
Jeff also profiles the UTS-15 bullpup shotgun, the Sig 227, sights from XS Sights, a carbon fiber AR from Windham, some Ruger exclusives from Lipsey’s, and Smith and Wesson Performance Center pistols.
Democrats in North Carolina took it on the chin in the 2012 elections. They lost the governorship, the lieutenant governorship, many seats in Congress, and stand at less than one-third of the members of each house of the General Assembly. Given that you’d think that they would be trying to establish positions that would help them regain lost ground.
Sean at An NC Gun Blog reports on how they just don’t get it. Clay Pittman, press secretary for the NC Democrat Party, issued a rambling, stream of consciousness, release attacking Gov. Pat McCrory for calling the gun prohibitionists “foolish” for their efforts to enact a new “assault weapons” (sic) ban. As McCrory correctly points out, all it is doing is increasing gun sales.
When Sean pressed Pittman on his statistics and position, he got a reply that said to check the NCDP party platform and that the state party will support Obama’s gun control agenda. He said what Democrat members of the General Assembly do is up to them.
I think Sean’s suggestion to write and call Democrat state senators and representatives to ask if they support this policy is a good one. My own state representative, Joe Sam Queen, is the only Democrat left in the General Assembly west of Asheville. I think one of the reasons he survived this election is because he wasn’t bad on guns. He isn’t great but he isn’t bad either.
So if you live in North Carolina and have a Democrat state senator or representative now is the time to put them on the spot. Force them to either agree with Pittman’s statement or disavow it. If they agree with it, make sure they are targeted in 2014.
Ed Head of Gunsite Academy and Downrange TV discusses the new firearms introduced by Sturm, Ruger for 2013. They include the SR1911 in Commander length, the LC390, new variants of the Scout Rifle, the Ruger Guide Rifle, and a number of .22 LR pistols.
The President of Maryland Shall Issue has requested our help in getting the word out. We’ve seen what happened in New York and Maryland could be next. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) like Andrew Cuomo has his eyes on the White House and is not above trashing the Second Amendment to get there.
From Patrick:
We published our “Call To Action” a few days back and folks have been hitting their reps in the statehouse pretty solid. Lawmakers are on alert, and we haven’t even seen the full text of the coming bills yet. We are told that O’Malley was looking to catch up to Cuomo, but this was before yesterday’s presser with Obama. That is being viewed by some up here with mixed feelings. It seemed more propaganda than motion, and with Harry Reid suggesting he won’t let an AWB move, there are bets back and forth on which direction O’Malley will swing, and just how hard he will press. I think we are going to have one hell of a fight, either way.
The Call To Action can be found here. If you are a Maryland resident, you need to keep checking the Maryland Shall Issue website for updates.
I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick at the 2012 Gun Rights Policy Conference. He and Maryland Shall Issue are really on top of things and know how to leverage technology to their advantage. I’m glad he’s on our side and not the side of the gun prohibitionists.
I’ve written in the past about Old Grouch Military Surplus. They are my local military surplus store and harken back to the days when surplus stores were just that. On Tuesday, they took a stand in support of the gun owners of New York who just had their Second Amendment rights trampled upon.
In support of our customers in the state of New York, effective today we are cancelling all orders to any state or municipal government agency customers in the New York and will accept no more. While we can’t stop the trampling of rights that is occurring there, we certainly can make sure we don’t assist in it in any way going forward.
They do a substantial mail order business and are one of the only places to find some items. I’m proud of their stand and I hope the majority of firearms manufacturers will emulate Tim’s approach – or as others have called it, the Barrett approach in honor of Ronnie Barrett’s stand against California and their .50 BMG ban.
Americans for Responsible Solutions is the new PAC formed by Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. It will seek to promote candidates that pursue “solutions to prevent gun violence and protect responsible gun ownership.”
Their registration with the Federal Elections Commission has now been processed and is available on-line. They list their official address as an office complex adjacent to Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC.
Their custodian of records is Vickie Winpisinger. Ms. Winpisinger serves or has served as treasurer for a number of other PACs and political campaigns with connections to Democrats. They include the House Majority Fund and Gabby PAC. She also was the campaign treasurer for Democrats including Nydia Velazquez, Eric Massa, Mike Ross, John Lewis, and Giffords. Winpisinger’s late father William was the long-time president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and big in left-wing circles.
The treasurer of the PAC is Texas personal injury lawyer J. Steven Mostyn. He is currently serving as the president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. According to the website Texas Trial Lawyer Watch, Mostyn gave over $10 million in campaign contributions in the 2010 election cycle plus another $400,000 to the Democratic Governors Association. There is even a website called The Truth About Steve Mostyn. According to the Dallas Morning News and Bloomberg, Mostyn has donated $1 million to Americans for Responsible Solutions.
According to a story in Time, Mostyn is good friends with Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly as well as Democratic consultant Paul Begalia.
Until then (Newtown), the couple had decided to avoid the activist path, treating the 2011 Phoenix shooting largely as a personal trauma that needed to be dealt with in private. “It’s not what we wanted to do,” he said. But now they went all-in, drawing up plans for two new organizations: a nonprofit to build grassroots support for changes to gun laws and a super PAC to run ads supporting members of Congress on the issue. Kelly decided to start working full time on the effort and began calling those he thought could help.One of his first calls was to Steve Mostyn, a wealthy trial-lawyer friend from Houston who happens to be one of the biggest contributors to Democratic super PACs. Like Kelly and Giffords, Mostyn is a gun owner. He sleeps with a handgun by his bed, in a safe that opens by his fingerprint. He has a gun range on his West Texas ranch and invites friends out to shoot. But when Kelly called, Mostyn had just dropped off his 5-year-old daughter at school. “I told him it was time,” Mostyn says.
The subject of gun laws was on his mind even before Sandy Hook. A few months earlier, he bought a couple of pistols, both with high-capacity magazines, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition for his gun collection at a local gun store. “The kid who walks me out to the car says to me, ‘It looks like you are going to start a war,’” Mostyn says, noting his shock at how easy it was to stock up on enormous amounts of lethal firepower.
“I’m not anti-gun. I’m just not pro-dumbass,” he continues, citing the more than 30,000 Americans who die every year from guns, mostly from suicide. “We’ve got a gun problem. That’s what differentiates us from other cultures.” He told Kelly he would seed the new group, which they called Americans for Responsible Solutions, with $1 million and begin fundraising with a goal of more than $14 million to support members of Congress in the 2014 elections who cast tough gun votes. “If a representative wants to vote their conscience, we are not going to allow you to bully,” he said of the NRA. “We will counter.”
$14 million to support representatives who “want to vote their conscience” sounds like an effort to buy votes for the gun prohibitionists. Like I said when last week, we need to keep a close eye on this group just like we do on Bloomberg.
When I read the release last week on the new youth/compact models of the Mossberg 500 and Maverick 88 in 20 gauge, I was very interested. I had been looking for a home defense shotgun in 20 gauge for the Complementary Spouse.
Ed Head interviews Linda Powell of Mossberg about their new introductions which includes the shotguns above as well as their MVP rifle in both Flex and patrol versions. I think they will be going head to head with Ruger when the MVP is released later this year in .308 Winchester.
Rights Watch International, the non-profit arm of Grass Roots North Carolina, has filed suit in Forsyth County Superior Court against the City of Winston-Salem. The case, Childs et al v. City of Winston-Salem et al, is seeking a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction against Winston-Salem over the city’s park carry ordinance on the grounds that it exceeded its authority, is unconstitutionally vague, and violates both the North Carolina and US Constitution.
The plaintiffs in the case are Rights Watch International and four individuals – David Childs, David Phillips, Shannon West, and Christopher Hjelm – who are claiming injury from the Winston-Salem park carry ordinance. The defendants in the case are the City of Winston-Salem, its Department of Recreation and Parks, Mayor Allen Joines, and Recreation and Parks Director Timothy Grant. The two individuals are being sued in their official capacities.
North Carolina, like most states, has a pre-emption statute that retains regulation of firearms as a state prerogative and limits what counties and municipalities may do. HB 650 which was passed in the last session of the North Carolina General Assembly said concealed carry in state, county, and municipal parks was legal. The only limitations that counties and cities may impose are prohibitions against carry in “recreational facilities” which were defined to be only “a playground, an athletic field, a swimming pool, and an athletic facility.”
The problem is that the city decided to play fast and loose with how they defined recreational areas and athletic facilities. From the adopted Ordinance No. 4735 which amended Section 38-10 of the Code of Ordinances:
(1) Recreational facilities include only the following: a playground, an athletic field, a swimming pool, and an athletic facility owned or operated by the city.
(2) Athletic field means a piece of land traditionally used for organized athletic or sporting event(s), including the adjoining spectator area.
(3) Athletic facility means a building, structure or place including a walking trail, greenway and body of water such as a lake for engaging in sporting events, recreational activities, fitness or physical training.
(4) Playground means a piece of land used for and usually equipped with facilities for recreation especially by children including the adjoining area and shelter used by children for respite, eating and playing sedentary games.
Not only has the city stretched the definition of athletic facility and recreational facility, they have failed to fulfill their responsibilities by consistently posting the recreational facilities in which concealed carry is prohibited. Since it is a class 3 misdemeanor which carries a fine of up to $500 to carry in prohibited locations, this is problematic for the plaintiffs and their desire to both obey the ordinance and to provide for their own self-protection.
All Plaintiffs have sought to determine where the ordinance does not allow concealed carry in the parks which they use, but have been unable to obtain a listing of the designated areas from the Defendants nor have they been able to identify the prohibited areas from posting in the parks due to the vagueness of the definitions in the Ordinance and the inconsistency or failure of Defendants to post restricted areas.
The lawsuit alleges that Winston-Salem, by their defining recreational facilities so expansively, has engaged in an “action in excess of statutory authority”. The suit further alleges that the city ordinances are “unconstitutionally vague in that they do not provide adequate notice to Plaintiffs as to what conduct is and is not legal and do not offer sufficient notice to prevent discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement..” Finally, the suit alleges that Winston-Salem’s ordinances violate the plaintiffs’ right to keep and bear arms because they operate in such a way as to be a total ban on the right to keep and bear arms.
The suit asks for a declaratory judgment saying the ordinances in question are null and void due to the above allegations. It further asks for attorneys’ fees and a permanent injunction prohibiting Winston-Salem from enforcing the ordinances.
Winston-Salem was chosen for this suit because their ordinance was the most egregious of all North Carolina municipalities which chose to post athletic and recreational facilities. They knowingly pushed the envelope and now they find themselves in court as well they should.
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