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Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others In California

October 11, 2015 by 3 Comments

California SB 707 was signed today by Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA). The bill prohibits gun owners from carrying concealed or otherwise on school property. The bill also make it against the law to have a single round of ammunition in your possession on school grounds regardless of whether you have a firearm. Brown ignored more than 40,000 letters and petitions from gun owners requesting that the veto the law.

The law exempts law enforcement officers including retired law enforcement. This latter part treats retired law enforcement as a special class even though the 9th Circuit struck down a law giving them special treatment back in 2002.

The Firearms Policy Coalition was one of the leading groups against the law and had hoped that Brown would veto it. I expect that they will file suit in due time to overturn this law.

They put out this release today:

SACRAMENTO – Today, Governor Brown signed into law Senate Bill 707, prohibiting gun owners issued a license by their local police chief or sheriff from carrying handguns for self-defense on California school grounds. It also subjects those with a carry permit, issued only after passing a strict, fingerprint-based background check and agency-approved training course, harsh new criminal liability for merely possessing a single round of ammunition on the grounds of any school or college campus, even if they don’t also possess a firearm.

Brandon Combs, the President of Firearms Policy Coalition, stated, “This is not just an attack on our Second Amendment rights, it is an attack on the most vulnerable in our society. Victims of domestic violence and stalking, judges, prosecutors, and public defenders who have a carry license will now have to leave their registered self-defense handguns at home when picking up their children at school, leaving them without the necessary protection from violent criminals.”

As introduced in February, SB 707 would have broadly eliminated carry on campus for virtually everyone except on-duty police or others specifically authorized to assist in an emergency. But the powerful law enforcement lobby immediately reacted to the gun control bill by offering their full support — in exchange for preservation of existing exemptions for law enforcement retirees. They later cut deals to add in even more special exemptions, including for retired police reservists. Combs believes that this is blatantly unconstitutional.

“The Ninth Circuit decided well over a decade ago that retired police officers are no different than retired plumbers for the purposes of gun laws,” explained Combs. The 2002 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down a California law that gave retired law enforcement officers special exemptions from the Assault Weapons Control Act was reinforced in a 2010 legal opinion issued by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown.

In the opinion, Brown explained that “Silveira teaches that it is….a peace officer’s role as a law enforcement agent that provides a rational basis for distinguishing between a peace officer and a private citizen for purposes of possessing and using assault weapons. A retired officer is not authorized to engage in law enforcement activities.”

Additionally, Firearms Policy Coalition members and supporters submitted over 40,000 letters to the Governor’s office urging a veto of SB 707.

Combs concluded, “It is unfortunate that the Governor has ignored the will of his constituents, common sense, and his own legal opinion. We will now focus on preparing the lawsuit we promised we would file against this unconstitutional law.”


Gun owners who wish to support the SB 707 litigation can donate at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/california/sb707.

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Ben Carson Tells The Truth And The Media Doesn’t Like It

October 9, 2015 by 1 Comment

You know that a Republican candidate has hit a nerve when all the mainstream media try to gang up on him (or her). The latest case in point is the mainstream media’s breathless attacks on Dr. Ben Carson for daring to suggest that the disarming of the Jews by the Nazis helped facilitate the Holocaust.

Carson made the suggestion in his new book A Perfect Union.  From ABC which made the issue one of their lead stories on the ABC Evening News with (anti-gun) David Muir.

In Carson’s new book “A Perfect Union,” Carson writes that “through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”

Wolf Blitzer got in on the breathless outrage with the interview below:

What I found particularly sad was this comment from a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League:

“Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the organization. “The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”

 I might remind Mr. Greenblatt that a very small number of firearms allowed Jewish resistance fighters to keep the Waffen-SS at bay in the Warsaw ghetto from April 19, 1943 until well into May. The final resistance was crushed on June 5th.

As to the rest of the media, I think a simple picture will suffice to say that Ben Carson was correct in saying the lack of arms allowed the Nazis to perpetrate their crimes with relative impunity. If a picture won’t suffice for the mainstream media, here is a link to the book so they can read it.

UPDATE: Joel Pollak writing at Breitbart called Dr. Carson’s comments a matter of historical fact. He also discussed a shooting class he took sponsored by Jews That Shoot. On the Polite Society Podcast, we have interviewed its founder Doris Montrose about that organization a number of times. She has consistently made the point that Jews should not be complacent and that they should have firearms to prevent a future holocaust.

Dave Kopel discussed the Warsaw Uprising in an article published yesterday in the Washington Post. It was in the context of a forthcoming book, “The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition”, that will be published in 2016.

Another eyewitness described the confusion in the German ranks: “There runs a German soldier shrieking like an insane one, the helmet on his head on fire. Another one shouts madly ‘Juden…Waffen…Juden… Waffen!’” [“Jews…weapons!”]

I think that answers the question of what might have happened if the Jewish population of Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe had not been disarmed.

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Well, Hillary, We’ve Seen How Successful Negotiations With Iran Have Been

October 8, 2015 by

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an interesting comment during a town hall meeting in Iowa on Wednesday. She compared the NRA to the Iranians and Communists when it comes to negotiating. All I’ll say is we’ve all seen just how successful the Obama Administration has been in its negotiations with the mullahs in Iran. In other words, the US gets diddly-squat and the death to America chanting mullahs get “the bomb”.

Frankly, if you think about it, using the negotiating techniques of mullahs and/or “Vlad the Impaler” Putin makes a lot of sense when it comes to gun rights. This is especially true when you consider the gun prohibitionists’ idea of compromise is negotiating how much we will give up.

Hillary’s comments prior to this remark were to encourage a “Fifth Column”, my words – not hers, of gun owners. They have tried this before with false-front organizations like the American Shooters and Hunters Association. I think the average gun owner is on to their tactics by now.

As an aside, I would encourage everyone to listen to Michael Bane’s rant on this week’s Downrange Radio. It is 45 minutes well spent. He describes the war between those who cherish our freedom and those who would take it away in very stark terms.

H/T The Daily Caller

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Five Easy Steps To A Gun-Free America

October 8, 2015 by 3 Comments

When President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other gun-hating progressives speak about how much they like the “Australian Model”, what they really mean is that they want gun confiscation. Unfortunately for them, there are impediments to this.

The good folks at Reason TV have come up with a video to assist the President, Mrs. Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, and all the rest in their campaign to get a gun-free America. By gun-free, I mean, of course, that they will still have their armed guards and we will be at the mercy of predators. As Reason TV says, all it takes is five easy steps.

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What Time Of The Month Is It?

October 8, 2015 by

That time of the month when Aaron at Weapon Blog posts his monthly compilation of contests featuring firearms, knives, accessories, and the like. That’s what time of the month it is!

As you can see below, there are some very nice 1911s in this month’s handgun list along with Heizer Defense Pocket AK which I’m sure everyone needs. Or not.

There are plenty of nice ARs as well.

If you do enter one or more of these contests, take a moment and leave Aaron a thank you note on his blog.

I have hot-linked all the links for your convenience.

Handguns

Rifles

Shotguns

Air Rifles

  • None this month

Ammunition

Knives

Constitution

Gun Rights Organizations

  • None this month

Accessories

Raffles

Training

  • None this month

Hunting

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Stance On Gun Rights Is All I Care About

October 5, 2015 by 4 Comments

The Guardian did a video called “Progressives with guns: yoga, ammo, and LGBT rights” that appeared on their website yesterday. I found it pretty good and rather even-handed. It featured a transgendered ex-SEAL running for Congress, a lawyer who was a Hare Krishna member, and Top Shot winner Chris Cheng who came out as gay a while back.

Frankly, I don’t care if you are transgender. I don’t care if you are gay. I don’t care if you are a Hare Krishna member (but don’t ask me for money at the airport). If you support gun rights, then you are my friend.

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Quote Of The Day

October 5, 2015 by

The quote of the day comes from Chris Knox. He wrote an article with his impressions of the Gun Rights Policy Conference that was held in Phoenix last weekend. Chris noted that majority of the speakers and virtually all the attendees were unpaid gun rights activists. They were from the actual grassroots and constitute the real gun lobby.

After discussing which organizations such as GOA, SAAMI, and NSSF had sent representatives to speak, Chris mentioned that the NRA had no official presence at the gathering unlike in the early years of the conference. He then said:

Those who think NRA is hard-line have never been to a GRPC.

I think he is right.

Listening to speakers from the various state-level gun rights organizations such as Grass Roots North Carolina, CalGuns, AZ Citizens Defense League, and many others, you got the sense that they were anxious to take Bloomberg and his paid evil minions head on. Moreover, they had no intention of giving any quarter in the battle for gun rights. The strategy is to meet force with force and to make any gains made by the gun prohibitionists so costly that “they think twice before ‘winning’ again.”

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Is CAGV Afraid Of A Little Political Theater?

October 2, 2015 by 4 Comments

Connecticut Against Gun Violence (sic) or CAGV was planning to have their 3rd Annual Conference on Saturday, October 3rd, at Yale University in New Haven. They were having a number of the bigwigs of the gun prohibitionist lobby attending. They were going to have Ladd Everitt of CSGV, Josh Sugarmann of VPC, and Colin Goddard of Everytown (formerly of Brady) among others.

Then they posted this announcement on Wednesday:

We regret that the CAGV Conference that was scheduled for October 3rd at Yale University has been cancelled. Unfortunately there are circumstances beyond our control that made this difficult decision necessary.

Rumor has it that a group of Californians was planning to attend that meeting.

Often when Californians talk to “gun folks” in other states, they express exasperation at our continued assaults on the fortress of prohibitionism, here. They encourage us to simply relocate to a Free State where we don’t have to worry constantly about complying with the California laws so Byzantine that not even the Bureau of Firearms successfully navigates them.

But we don’t want to leave, and even if we did, we’re seeing that California’s and Connecticut’s cancer is spreading toward the Heartland.

Draw the line now.

We’re organizing a protest at this meeting. We’re not going to stand out there with signs and matching t-shirts to scream at traffic. We’re going to disrupt it. Nothing violent, but political theater goes a long way.

Plans are coming together. Clear your schedule, we’re all going to Connecticut!

I wonder if the protest the Californians had planned was anything like this one planned for San Francisco a few years back.

Would those California gun owners have gone full Alinsky on CAGV?  I guess we’ll never know since CAGV cancelled their event. What a pity!

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From The New York Times, No Less.

October 2, 2015 by 1 Comment

This report is from the New York Times regarding the school shooter in Oregon. It is about the source of his weapons as confirmed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

In all, the gunman had owned 14 firearms, said Celinez Nunez, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, including one he had traded in. The Douglas County Sheriff’s Department said the gunman took five handguns and a rifle to Umpqua Community College on Thursday morning, and had two pistols, four rifles and a shotgun in his apartment.

“All 14 have been traced to a federal firearms dealer,” some bought by the gunman and others by members of his family, said Ms. Nunez, the assistant special agent in charge of the Seattle field office. “They were all purchased legally.”

As AWR Hawkins of Breitbart said at the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference, “It is harder to find a mass shooter who didn’t go through a background check than one that did.”

To illustrate that point, Hawkins listed a number of these murderers that did pass background checks in a column today in Breitbart.

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GRPC 2015: Using Media To Advance Gun Rights

September 29, 2015 by 8 Comments

I was honored to be asked to be on a panel at the 2015 Gun Rights Policy Conference. The topic of our panel was “Using Media to Advance Gun Rights.” Also on the panel were Charles Heller of Liberty Watch Radio, Don Irvine of Accuracy in Media, Herb Stupp of New York who had been part of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s cabinet, Cheryl Todd of GunTalk AZ, and Dave Workman.

Below is the text of my speech. I would welcome comments and criticism.

Hi. I’m John Richardson.


This morning I plan to tell you how I as a citizen journalist use the Internet to advance gun rights and how you can use it too. As the representative of New Media on this stage this morning, first let me tell you how I got started.


I had been a longtime reader of blogs. I finally decided in May 2010 that I could do just as well as anyone else and started my blog, “No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money.” The name was a play on the Warren Zevon song, “Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money”. I’m a – not a lawyer – hence the name.


I didn’t have many readers at first but I just kept plugging along. Then something happened that gave my blog a big boost: Alan Gura won the McDonald case and then using this ruling, the SAF and Grass Roots North Carolina sued North Carolina to overturn the ban on firearms during declared states of emergency.


I saw it as my mission to report on the details of this and the other McDonald follow-on cases. I worked hard to provide background information so that readers would have a really good understanding of the issues. I felt that if people who supported gun rights had better knowledge than that provided by the mainstream media then they could argue our side more persuasively.


Fast forward to today, 4200+ blog posts, 1.7 million visitors later, and there have been many more cases and a good number of wins. Somewhere along the way I added the role of podcaster to my efforts on behalf of the Second Amendment. I am now a co-host on The Polite Society Podcast which is livestreaming this conference.


My blog as well as the podcast does four things: it educates, it informs, it advocates, and it entertains. The first three help advance the cause of gun rights while the fourth is just because we all need to laugh a bit especially if it is at the expense of the gun prohibitionists!


Let me give you some examples.


Our podcast The Polite Society Podcast has a regular feature called Defensive Gun Uses. We compile instances of how a lawful gun owner has used a firearm to defend him or herself and their family. The examples we have often involve robbery or a home invasion. We look at what the person did right and what they did wrong. We don’t sugarcoat it as this is essential education on the rights and responsibilities of gun owners.


The best example of the blogosphere informing people that helped advance the cause of gun rights was the work that David Codrea, Mike Vanderboegh, and Dave Workman did in exposing Operation Fast and Furious which started right here in Phoenix. It was bloggers that connected whistleblowers with Congressional investigators. It was bloggers that introduced the whistleblowers to Sharyl Attkisson so that she could air their stories on television. Many other bloggers including myself took the ball put into play by David, Mike, and Dave and ran with it. If the scandal – and it wasn’t some botched sting operation – gained legs, it was due to the efforts of New Media – not Old Media.


We in the New Media are open about our efforts to advocate on behalf of gun rights and the Second Amendment. Back in 2011, ATF was soliciting public comments on whether to implement a reporting requirement that would force border state FFLs to inform them when someone bought more than one semi-auto rifle within a five day period. The gun control lobby had a letter generator, we didn’t. With the assistance of one of my readers, we set up a letter generator with a pre-written letter. Our letter generator sent 3,203 letters to OMB opposing this power grab. ATF still implemented it but by God they couldn’t say there was no opposition!


I don’t think I need to give examples of how blogs entertain. There are just too many.


An old journalist once said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those that own one.” Well, as a blogger and podcaster I do own one. And thanks to the Internet so does everyone in this room.


When you post pictures of yourself taking a new shooter to the range on Facebook, you are advancing the cause. When you post a picture of a new gun you bought to Instagram, you are normalizing guns. When you tweet a link to an article that is pro-gun, you are spreading the message. Let’s not forget Tumblr, Pinterest, and YouTube. Posting pictures or videos of successful hunts, reloading benches, etc. help advance the gun culture.


If there is one message I want to leave you with this morning it is this: We are in a cultural war against strong, well-funded, top-down opponents. They have the mainstream media on their side. We have the grassroots. New Media gives us the tools to conduct our cultural guerrilla war, build our grassroots support, and spread our message of self-reliance, freedom, and gun rights.


Thank you for your time today.

The Polite Society Podcast livestreamed both days of the conference. I was able to excerpt my presentation. While the crowd on Sunday was not as large as that on Saturday, it was certainly more people than I had ever spoken to before. Click on the “Watch highlights” to see my portion of the presentation.