P. Beretta is the world’s oldest continually operating firearms company. They trace their history back to 1526 making arquebus barrels. Their products range from the ultra-utilitarian Beretta 92 series of handguns to exquisitely beautiful double shotguns.
A few years ago they produced a short film illustrating the interface between high technology and hand craftmanship in their high end shotguns. It was exceedingly well done and perfect to watch on a Monday morning.
I met Shane Thurston for the first time at the Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago. That was the year after the win in McDonald v. Chicago and the late Otis McDonald himself was there. He and I would then meet periodically at GRPC over the next number of years and became friends.
This year we started talking about him contributing to the blog and he agreed. While I have resisted adding others besides the Complementary Spouse to the blog, Shane brings something to the blog that I can’t. That is, he knows what it is like to be a gun owner behind enemy lines.
He lived in the Chicagoland area for many years and now lives in Westchester County, New York. Sometimes work and your spouse’s work doesn’t leave you with many options.
He will be writing about guns, the Second Amendment, and personal safety from that perspective. He will be submitting pieces on an occasional basis which I hope becomes more regular.
Here is a picture of Shane when he first learned about the NY SAFE Act.
Well, actually, it might be a picture of his standard poodle Kaiser but you get the drift.
The New York Times ran a story by Danny Hakim regarding the financing of the “Russia trip”. It appeared in Thursday’s paper. The “Russia trip” was a visit to Moscow organized by Maria Butina. It was attended by former NRA President David Keene, then-1st VP Pete Brownell, Sheriff David Clarke, and some other board members. The trip was for the purpose of building stronger ties between the NRA and gun-rights supporters in Russia.
The financing of the trip has been of interest to both Congressional investigators and to NY Attorney General Letitia James. There have been a complicated series of personal checks and reimbursements which has attracted their attention. According to the article, the NRA’s outside counsel William Brewer III has asserted in internal presentations that “those involved had exposed themselves to wire fraud charges.” Other attorneys disagreed with this assertion.
Brewer is also asserting that Wayne LaPierre was opposed to the trip. This, however, is contradicted by emails from the time which marked trip-related invoices as “Wayne approved”.
While the whole financing issue is of interest to investigators, it is what is buried in this story that caught my attention. In other words, the story within the story. It concerns the bureaucratic infighting between some of LaPierre’s closest associates.
The invoices for the trip were overseen by LaPierre’s closest aide Millie Hallow.
The 2016 transactions were overseen by Millie Hallow, an aide to Mr. LaPierre, according to emails. In one February 2016 email, Ms. Butina sent an invoice directly to Ms. Hallow for “Hosting of NRA leadership group for six days in Moscow,” according to the document, and thanked her “for your invaluable advice these past few months.”
In a May 26 email that year, Ms. Hallow told other N.R.A. officials that an invoice related to the trip submitted by Mr. Brownell’s company, the firearms retailer Brownells, had been authorized: “Wayne approved these special projects involving Outreach that Brownell has done,” she wrote.
Now it appears that Josh Powell, Chief of Staff to LaPierre, is trying to throw Millie under the bus.
On Thursday, Josh Powell, the N.R.A.’s chief of staff, said in a statement that “in order to facilitate the transfer of funds to Brownell, Millie falsely stated that Wayne approved of certain expenses when he had not. In fact, Millie apologized to me (and others) later for the misrepresentation.”
You may remember that in late July I did a blog post regarding Millie Hallow. It detailed how she had been convicted of felony embezzlement while directing the DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities. My impression was that had been kept a closely guarded secret. I had NRA board members tell me they didn’t know Ms. Hallow was a convicted felon until that post was published.
It now appears that someone wants that information in the public domain.
But Ms. Hallow is one of Ms. LaPierre’s closest aides, and raising questions about her credibility comes at an inopportune time. The N.R.A. is relying on her word in its battle with Oliver North, the organization’s former president, who stepped down this year shortly after making a call to Ms. Hallow that N.R.A. officials described as threatening toward Mr. LaPierre. Ms. Hallow also once pleaded guilty to a felony related to the theft of money from an arts agency she ran in Washington. (emphasis mine)
It would be interesting to know which one of Hakim’s sources pointed that out to him. It does serve the purposes of Josh Powell but the question remains whether he is smart enough to made use of it. I don’t see it serving the purpose of Brewer as he needs her to be a credible witness against Ollie North. That is, unless it is more important to protect LaPierre in the Russia investigation than it is to continue the fight against Ollie North. If that is the case then there is a lot more substance to this whole Russia fiasco than we previously thought and it is a lot more dangerous to the personal fortune of LaPierre. Time will tell.
Imagine that you a retired Federal special agent with one of the alphabet agencies. Now imagine that you are in a Congressional hearing as the “resident expert” for one of the anti-rights, gun control organizations. You get stuck next to a former street cop from an department in flyover country. That cop is an attractive woman, has more street cred than you’ll ever have, can out shoot you and most everyone in your alphabet agency, and gets all the TV time after the hearing.
It sucks to be you.
That is what David Chipman faced yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee hearing on banning modern sporting rifles. It helps to explain his petulant little tweet this morning.
Not sure we should lionize former law enforcement who claim they will not follow the law. On the job we have a name for these folks…we call them criminals. I hope she destroyed her bump stock. @HouseJudiciary https://t.co/LbZhYL017w
— David Chipman (@davidchipman) September 25, 2019
Jealous much?
Reading through his biography provided to the committee some things stood out. First, most of his BATFE experience was in management and not as a field agent. Second, he was assigned to the Waco field office and was the “case agent in the Branch Davidian trial”. Third, he parlayed his work with BATFE and as a International Association of Police Chiefs Fellow into either a job with the gun control lobby or in a related industry.
Then there is this tidbit from Cleanupatf.org. They are the guys in the field who got tired of the corruption, back-scratching, and incompetence of the BATFE Headquarters and management.
When it was brought to the Bureaus attention that Chipman had tried to grease the skids for former ASAC Stankoweicz(sp), the 5th floor was outraged and tanked the contract offer for someone who had so blatantly and publicly disgraced the Bureau. That did not prevent him from sliding into some other non Bureau contracted position. The problem is, that Chipman has been manipulating the Bureau sponsored contractor to pad the BQL with friends. The net effect is that the truly qualified people are not being considered for the positions. It has also been stated that Chipman has delivered HIS version of the BQLs for these contract positions, demanding his buddies be placed at the top of the list. Yep fraud. That simple. Yep the 5th floor knows.
BQL stands for best qualified list.
Finally, what kind of person puts where he or she went to high school on their professional resume? We may be proud of our alma mater but give me a frigging break. Chipman wants you to know he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. I’m guessing that is a kind of virtue signaling. It says that while he didn’t graduate from an Ivy League college, he wasn’t like the other jack-booted thugs in his alphabet agency. I’m guessing Chipman thinks it signals that he is one of the elite who “care”.
If you were to believe the representative from Giffords the AR market is being flooded with foreign imports and home-made ARs.
This came up today in the House Judiciary Committee hearing today on banning “assault weapons”. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) started the conversation by asking David Chipman about Colt and their decision to temporarily leave the commercial market. Chipman, a retired BATFE agent, is now a Senior Policy Advisor with Giffords. He previously held a similar position with Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors.
I seem to remember that the late President George H. W. Bush imposed a ban on so-called assault weapons in 1989. Given that, I wonder where Chipman is getting his information. I mean an ATF agent, active or retired, would never make stuff up, now would he?
Dianna Muller was invited to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today. The topic was “Protecting America from Assault Weapons” (sic). By the title and the composition of the witness panel you knew it was going to hostile to gun rights.
The witnesses included Kristen Rand from the Violence Policy Center (sic), David Chipman from Giffords, Chief RaShall Brackney of Charlottesville, VA, a doctor from El Paso, and the mayor of Dayton, Ohio. The only other pro-rights advocate invited was Amy Shearer of the Heritage Foundation.
Dianna is a retired police officer, 3-Gun champion, and founder of the DC Project. As a police officer in Tulsa, she was assigned to patrol, Street Crimes, Narcotics, and Gang units. She probably has seen more crime up close and personal than anyone else on the panel including the odious David Chipman of Giffords who served with BATFE.
via ytCropperDouble click on the video link above to see the excerpt of Dianna’s testimony. You can find her written testimony here.
Kudos to Dianna and the women of the DC Project who showed up in support of her. Congress needs to hear their stories and what they have to say. It may be like talking to a brick wall. Nonetheless, they are important and need to be circulated amongst those whose minds aren’t closed.
Charlie Cook was chosen as the 2019 Ray Carter Blogger of the Year by the Second Amendment Foundation. Charlie produces Riding Shotgun with Charlie and Charlie’s Gun Grams. Both of these can be found on YouTube.
The award is named in honor of the late Ray Carter. Ray, or Gay Cynic to use his nom de plume, worked for the Second Amendment Foundation as Director of Development. He loved blogging and blogged at Free Thinker. Ray died in 2016 after a long battle with cancer. The Minuteman had this tribute on his life.
Left to right: Rob Morse (2018), Slow Facts; John Richardson (2017), No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money; Charlie Cook; Paul Lathrop (2016) Polite Society Podcast.
Charlie may not be a blogger in the truest sense of the word but he was very deserving of this award. Despite having met Ray only once in person, I think he would approve. Charlie reaches millions with his Gun Grams and his Riding Shotgun with Charlie YouTube videos. Getting the pro-gun message out using New Media is what it is all about.
Another Gun Rights Policy Conference is done and in the books. This year’s conference attendance set a record with over 1,100 attendees. Over 100,000 watched it live on Facebook where it was livestreamed. GRPC set another record with 91 speakers. I was one of the 91 and spoke on the panel that covered using new media to advance gun rights.
Below is my presentation as delivered. In a few days, there will be video up on YouTube of this and the rest of the presentations.
Good Afternoon!
I’m John Richardson of the blog No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money. I’m also a co-host of the Polite Society Podcast.
I had a rude awakening a month and a half ago. I woke to find that Google’s Blogger had taken my blog down and was threatening to delete it. I could not even access it to backup my nine and a half years of work. My blood ran cold at the thought of losing all that work.
I was erroneously accused of violating the terms of service for selling or facilitating the sale of a regulated item. I was put in the same category as drug dealers and other purveyors of prohibited or regulated items.
I immediately appealed and I got tremendous support from the gun rights community. Dave Workman wrote an article for Liberty Park Press. Tom Knighton covered it on Bearingarms.com. People aimed tweets at Google and Blogger. There were posts about it on Facebook. Two days later, I got a email from Blogger saying, in essence, “Ooops. We made a mistake. You didn’t violate anything. So sorry.”
I tell you this story not to gain your sympathy. I tell it to show how we are at the mercy of big tech oligopolies. There have been plenty of stories about gun rights supporters being suspended or banned from Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. You know, like SAF. We have seen the demonetization of firearms-oriented YouTube videos. Thanks to leaks, we know that through the use of algorithms and key word lists there is a conscious effort to suppress our voices in advocacy of the Second Amendment, self-defense, and gun rights.
I got complacent and we as a community have gotten complacent. The social media giants made it so easy to be involved in social media that we forgot something. That something was that if you don’t control the means of getting the message out, it can be turned off at a whim and you are suppressed.
I decided never again. I bought my own domain name and thanks to my friend Bill Chachkes of Firearms Chat Podcast, I was hooked up with a 2A friendly host – Patriot Hosting.
We need to do three things if we want to continue getting the message out. First, we need to control our hosting and not be dependent upon companies that will sell us out in a heartbeat. Second, we need to explore going back to older technology that is beyond the control of the tech oligarchs. By this I mean firearms forums and perhaps even old fashioned bulletin board systems. I should clarify that I’m not advocating going back to 2400 baud modems to dial long distance to a favorite gun board. Finally, seek out and use newer alternatives like MeWe, Full 30, and Declan McCullagh’s “Talki. Ng”.
The late Professor Brian Patrick who spoke at GRPC a number of times called how we communicate the anti-media. He spoke and wrote about this extensively. Professor Patrick credited horizontal interpretive communities and how they communicated for the passage of shall issue carry laws in Florida and elsewhere. In non-social science speak, this means gun rights supporters and potential allies talked to one another, planned their strategies, and organized through the use of newsletters, forums and bulletin board systems outside the notice of the mass media. The key phrase here is that they talked to one another. Moreover, they talked to one another as equals. It was not top-down like our opponents.
You may never want to be a blogger, a podcaster, a YouTuber, or any other type of content creator. Nonetheless, you can help out those of us who are by providing us with leads, tips, and other information. Some of my best blog posts have come due to this. We are all in this together, we are a community, and we all can help one another protect, preserve, and enhance our Second Amendment rights.
NY City Mayor Bill de Blasio has dropped out the 2020 Presidential race. I’m sorry but I didn’t feel a disturbance in the force. There was no ripple in the pond and no moving of the Earth. Maybe it was because this seemed to me to be purely a vanity thing for de Blasio.
From the Washington Examiner:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has ended his long-shot bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election, and it’s clearly not my time so I’m going to end my presidential campaign,” de Blasio told Morning Joe on Friday.
De Blasio, who did not appear in the third debate earlier this month, said he could not see a path forward for his campaign because he could not meet the polling and donation thresholds to make the debate stage.
A Quinnipiac poll of New York City residents earlier this year put him dead last when asked which New York politician would make the best president. The list included Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and even AOC who is not eligible to be President.
Arrgh! I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I read about it on Reddit’s rum subreddit. September 19th is international talk like a pirate day. Believe it or not but this is the 17th year it has been celebrated. Pretty good for something that originated with a poor game of racquetball.
But since we are talking about pirates, other than parrots, peg-legs, and doubloons, what is more associated with them than rum? Now a good rum is a thing of sublime beauty that can rival the best whiskeys. Then there is the stuff that even a mixer like Coca-Cola can’t make drinkable.
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