by New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) thinks she has an offer that gun owners can’t refuse. I think she has been watching too many re-runs of The Sopranos.
In an exclusive interview with MSNBC (which should tell you something right there), Weinberg said she will introduce legislation to repeal New Jersey’s so-called “smart gun” law if the National Rifle Association will agree to not stand in the way of the technology.
Weinberg said that if opposition to the New Jersey law is stopping smart guns from being sold, she will seek to have it changed – if the NRA agrees to stop standing in the way of smart gun technology.
“If, in fact, the NRA will make a public commitment to not stand in the way of the manufacture, distribution or sale of any gun that is limited by technology to the use of only its owner,” Weinberg said, “then I will ask the New Jersey legislature to amend the law.”
Weinberg said she was taking the position in an attempt to meet smart gun opponents “right on their own ground,” since “whatever goalposts they set for you, they move them.”
“I have never been involved in an issue that results in the kind of vitriolic pushback that I get both personally and professionally when I’m involved in something as simple as gun safety,” she added.
Weinberg makes the same mistake that many in the gun prohibitionist community makes. She assumes that the NRA is a monolithic organization that merely needs to snap its fingers for gun right supporters to fall into line. That may be the case with the astroturf organizations that support gun control but it doesn’t work in a movement where you have genuine grassroots. The NRA is led as much by the grassroots as the grassroots is led by the NRA. In other words, they both exert influence.
As to Weinberg’s comments about the pushback she gets on “something as simple as gun safety”, it is because it isn’t about gun safety. It is about control and interfering with an enumerated Constitutional right. If it was really about safety, then the first group to have so-called smart guns would be cops as so many of them have been shot with their own firearms. That said, the New Jersey law specifically exempts law enforcement and the military. Their new handguns are not required to be “personalized handguns” as they are called in the bill.
So Loretta, thanks for the offer but no thanks. It is an offer that we can refuse.
People would buy reliable, transparent smart guns the same way people adopted reliable, transparent red-dot sights on rifles and are beginning to do the same on carry and duty handguns. The NRA wouldn't be able to stop them . . . if that technology existed at a competitive price point. I'd be fine with a carry gun or a bedside gun that only, say, my wife or I could fire . . . and if the system worked as reliably as an Aimpoint, I'd probably take those odds. If the NRA said not to buy it, they could go screw.
I would never buy a product whose security is based on RFID.
And if it were offered in an actual defensive caliber, and not limited to .22LR.
Ms. Weinberg has it backwards. The NRA, a.k.a. the "gun lobby," is not flat-out against so-called "smart guns." NRA members – a.k.a. the people – found out about the cost, the reliability issues, and the caliber limitation. The people understand how the "smart gun" mandate laws work (in NJ, for example, three years after any "smart gun" hits the market anywhere in the U.S., EVERY handgun sold in NJ must be a "smart gun"). And the people understand that this who farce is not about "gun safety" or "saving the children"; it's about control and denying Constitutionally-protected rights that the elites don't want the people to have, and the opposition movement is about the people being more educated and aware than the elites think possible.
I honestly don't believe the NRA leadership would have much to say about the technology if their members weren't so outraged and motivated against it. Absent any laws mandating it, I believe the free market would kill this thing whether or not the NRA took a position for or against it. I look at the backlash against "smart guns," and I see an opposition movement that is far more driven from the bottom up than led from the top down.
And in Jersey, as soon as the Armatix POS was on the market, they'd pass a new law mandating them immediately.
You lose stupid gun owners. Haven't you ever learned to stop making "deals" or "compromises" with people who want you dead?
Exactly.
And I think most gun owners have learned this by now. We all know the history of deals and compromise with the anti-gunners. We all know they never stop once they get their pound of flesh. And we all know that we don't want deals or compromise any more. We just want our rights- all of them.
It took decades for most gun owners to get this, and thanks to the internet, they do.
I don't see a problem with offering "smart guns" as a market alternative. The problem comes when states mandate those as the only guns offered or sale, such as New Jersey has done. Personally, I don't want anything that the government can turn of remotely, so I will stay with "dumb guns".
Any doubt that the NSA (and Eric the Withholder) will develop a jammer to make smart guns non-functional when the SHTF?
In addition to basic firearms training, you also need to learn advanced tactics such as malfunction clearing, combat and tactical reloads, proper use of cover, and the list goes on and on. Firearm safety training is very useful to get all aspects of shooting.