Michael Bane

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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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Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right

June 4, 2014 by 7 Comments



The rest of that song by Stealers Wheel goes “here I am stuck in the middle with you.”

That is how I’m feeling about the whole open carry fiasco in Texas. I doubt that there are many readers of this blog that don’t support the extension of open carry in Texas to include handguns. Many states including my own North Carolina have unlicensed open carry.

What is incredibly frustrating is watching Shannon Watts and her fellow gun prohibitionists at Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors making hay out of the bumbling ineptitude of groups like Open Carry Texas. Sonic, Chipotle, and god knows who’s next have issued “Starbucks-style” statement asking the open carry activists to leave them out of the argument.

Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned has done yeoman’s work in examining the folly of their actions. You can read some of those posts here, here, and here. There are more.

The attention whoring of these OC activists has caused such backlash that the NRA issued a statement last Thursday which said, in part,

Yet while unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms.

Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.

As a result of these hijinx, two popular fast food outlets have recently requested patrons to keep guns off the premises (more information can be found here and here). In other words, the freedom and goodwill these businesses had previously extended to gun owners has been curtailed because of the actions of an attention-hungry few who thought only of themselves and not of those who might be affected by their behavior. To state the obvious, that’s counterproductive for the gun owning community.

More to the point, it’s just not neighborly, which is out of character for the big-hearted residents of Texas. Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners. That’s not the Texas way. And that’s certainly not the NRA way.

Chris Cox of the NRA-ILA backed away from that statement yesterday saying it was the personal opinion of some unnamed staffer and not the NRA’s official position. He apologized for any confusion it caused. Others such as Charles Cooke of National Review disagreed saying that it was what needed to be said. I think I and the majority of the gun blogging and gun podcast community would agree that it needed to said.

Bob Owens had an interesting observation on this at BearingArms.com. He noted that often in cases like this where a statement is retracted that it is the original statement which reflects the internal thinking of the organization. In other words, it was what we called back in my political science days “signalling“.


As Michael Bane emphasized today in his Downrange Radio podcast, our goal in the gun rights community needs to be winning. We no more win hearts and minds with these open carry demonstrations in restaurants than the US Air Force did with carpet bombing in South Vietnam. I would send a copy of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to everyone in the Texas open carry leadership if I could.

I can’t, so in the meantime I will implore them to cut out the narcissistic displays, clean up their websites and Facebook pages, and, as Michael suggested, think before you do stupid. Those of us stuck in the middle would appreciate it.

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Why Carry When Hiking?

May 18, 2014 by 3 Comments

You are out in the woods communing with nature. It is peaceful and quiet. The only man-made sounds you hear are your own footsteps on the trail. So why in the world would you need to carry a firearm?

This.

Francis “Pat” Gregory, 69, of West Tisbury, and a 76-year-old man from Manton, California, were hiking a trail north of Red Bluff on Friday when they were confronted by a gunman, said Tehama County Sheriff’s Lt. Dave Greer.

The robber shot the men after taking their money and belongings, and left the victims for dead on a remote part of the trail until another hiker came upon them about three hours later.

Gregory died at the scene; the surviving victim was hospitalized with critical injuries. A doctor told investigators he was expected to pull through, Greer said.

The men were found about 100 yards from the start of a Bureau of Land Management trail that leads through grasslands, oak trees and lava rocks to an overlook above a bend in the Sacramento River.

You can find some more examples plus some good advice on keeping safe on the trail in Michael Bane’s Trail Safe. You can find it here.

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Comment Of The Day

May 12, 2014 by 1 Comment

This comment of the day should be more accurately be called the rant of the day – and I do so love a good rant.


The rant comes from Michael Bane in response to Hillary Clinton’s comments about how she didn’t believe in gun rights or, at least, gun rights as most of us in the gun culture understand them.


So, let’s recap, kids…this pathetic old harridan, who was willing to stay with a sexual predator indefinitely because she so loved power, who allowed an American ambassador be killed on her watch and American heroes be left behind to die, who looked the family of a man she claimed as friend in the eyes and lied to their faces, who has the cold-blooded gall to tell Congress, “What difference does it make,” who traveled a million miles as Secretary of State and accomplished nothing, who coined the phrase “nuts and sluts” to describe the women her husband sexually abused, who blamed illegalities in her former law firm on her junior associate who didn’t have the power to requisition paper clips, a woman who quite literally has accomplished nothing of consequence in her entire life spent grubbing for power over other people, and she calls us unbalanced?

That is what I call an epic rant!

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No Shame

April 13, 2013 by 2 Comments

I realize that the concept of shame is an old-fashioned one and that it seems out of place in the post-modern world. Thus, the attempt by the White House to shame the Congress into passing gun control comes across as both quaint and manipulative.

The latest instance is using the mother of one of the children murdered in Newtown to deliver President Obama’s weekly radio and Internet address. It has been released as a YouTube video and MP3 file in addition to the transcript below.

Remarks of Francine Wheeler
The President’s Weekly Address

Hi. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not the President. I’m just a citizen. And as a citizen, I’m here at the White House today because I want to make a difference and I hope you will join me.

My name is Francine Wheeler. My husband David is with me. We live in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

David and I have two sons. Our older son Nate, soon to be 10 years old, is a fourth grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our younger son, Ben, age six, was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly 4 months ago this weekend.

David and I lost our beloved son, but Nate lost his best friend. On what turned out to be the last morning of his life, Ben told me, quite out of the blue, “ I still want to be an architect, Mama, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”

Ben’s love of fun and his excitement at the wonders of life were unmatched His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over. He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning. He sang with perfect pitch and had just played at his third piano recital. Irrepressibly bright and spirited, Ben experienced life at full tilt.

Until that morning. 20 of our children, and 6 of our educators – gone. Out of the blue.

I’ve heard people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded. But not for us. To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday. And in the four months since we lost our loved ones, thousands of other Americans have died at the end of a gun. Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief.

Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse for the boy who would never come home – the same firehouse that was home to Ben’s Tiger Scout Den 6. But other times, I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do – for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon.

We have to convince the Senate to come together and pass commonsense gun responsibility reforms that will make our communities safer and prevent more tragedies like the one we never thought would happen to us.

When I packed for Washington on Monday, it looked like the Senate might not act at all. Then, after the President spoke in Hartford, and a dozen of us met with Senators to share our stories, more than two-thirds of the Senate voted to move forward.

But that’s only the start. They haven’t yet passed any bills that will help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And a lot of people are fighting to make sure they never do.

Now is the time to act. Please join us. You can talk to your Senator, too. Or visit WhiteHouse.gov to find out how you can join the President and get involved.

Help this be the moment when real change begins. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

While I feel sorrow for the family, their grief at losing their son is not a reason to pass measures that are at once both ineffective in stopping another Newtown shooting and an infringement on the Second Amendment guarantees. If the White House and their fellow gun prohibitionists were really serious about trying to avert another Newtown, they would be looking at mental health issue and school security measures such as arming and training teachers.

To get a better perspective on grief and its misuse here, read Michael Bane’s post entitled “Riverdance in Blood”. I recommended it earlier this week and I’m doing it again. As he notes, the grief of the victims drives them to demand a solution to insoluble problems which is the case with Mrs. Wheeler above.

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Quote Of The Day

April 10, 2013 by

Given that your tax dollars were used to fly some of the families of the victims of the shootings in Newtown down to Washington aboard Air Force One to lobby Congress for gun control, Michael Bane’s post from yesterday takes on special relevance. He examines whether victims’ families have any particular claim on “truth”. He concludes:

Yes, the words of victims have special poignancy, but what they don’t
have is any special truth. Grief drives us to look toward the heavens
and demand an answer from any nearby Deity. Grief drives us to demand a
solution to the fundamental insoluble problem, which is that the world
is as it is. Bad things happen, often to good people, and grief drives
us to…do something.

Read the whole post and keep that in mind while these families and their tragedy are being used to further the political agenda of Obama, Bloomberg, and the rest of the gun prohibitionists.

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The Fine Hand Of Bloomberg And Bill Drafting

March 26, 2013 by 9 Comments

The New York Post reported yesterday that sources within Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration are blaming the Brady Campaign and Bloomberg’s people for all the problems with the new NY SAFE Act. That is, of course, beyond the fact that the bill was rammed through both houses of the New York State legislature with very no discussion.

A Cuomo administration source is flatly denying the governor’s claim that his new anti-gun SAFE Act was carefully drafted, saying the governor himself wasn’t even aware of some provisions when it was hastily enacted into law.

“The governor thought the limit on the size of [gun] magazines would only apply to assault-style rifles, not to handguns,’’ said the source.

“That’s why there’s the big problem now with handguns, among other things in the statute.’’

The legal sale of virtually all semiautomatic handguns will soon be impossible because Cuomo’s law limits the size of bullet-holding magazines to seven shots, virtually none of which are manufactured for sale.

“Much of what’s in the law was drafted by people connected to Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center, not by the governor’s staff,” the source said. “That’s why there are so many problems with it.’’

As Michael Bane has reported many times, the new gun control bills in Colorado were drafted by Bloomberg and his people and have definitions that are peculiar to New York law and not Colorado law. This especially relates to the definition of transfer of a firearm.

Meanwhile back in February, in Minnesota, Rep. Alice Hausman, the prime sponsor and ostensible author of HF 241 – the Minnesota “assault weapons” (sic) ban – left the hearings on her own bill and let Heather Martens, a lobbyist from the gun control group Protect Minnesota, explain the bill. Hausman told a reporter later that she really didn’t understand her own bill. That bill also had a different definition of “transfer” as well.

As used in this section, “transfer” means a sale, gift, loan,
assignment, or other delivery to another, whether or not for consideration, of an assault
weapon.

When the BATFE speaks of transfer of a firearm, they mean the transfer of ownership or title. Under normal commercial law, a sales transaction or transfer of title requires an offer, an acceptance of that offer, and the offering of consideration. Consideration is the cash or other remuneration paid for the item. Without those three actions, the transaction or transfer is void and didn’t occur. Notice that the Minnesota law explicitly removes the third element from their definition of transfer.

I’m sure a close examination of any of the other gun control bills involving semi-automatic firearms, magazines, and background checks that have been introduced in many state legislatures would show these same similarities. What Michael Bloomberg and his billions can’t achieve on a national level might be achieved on the state level if we aren’t on guard. As Michael Bane said to Tom Gresham on Sunday during his interview on Gun Talk, they were blindsided in Colorado.

UPDATE: It seems like Mayor Bloomberg isn’t pleased with the reports that Cuomo is blaming the drafting of NY SAFE on him.

Asked about that criticism today, Bloomberg erupted in anger.

“What did we do, put a gun to their head, if you pardon the pun, and force them to write legislation?” he said, during a press conference in Brooklyn about helping the unemployed get jobs. “Is that the allegation? That we were up there with automatic weapons with expanded capacity magazines forcing them to write a bill?”

“That’s the kind of journalism that I find troublesome,” he continued. “You’ve got a source that isn’t willing to put their name on the bill and the reporting of it wasn’t in the context of, is that credible? But they were forced by guns, or a knife at their throat, to take our ideas. If they took our ideas, I’m flattered. I hope they did. And I don’t know whether they did or didn’t, and I don’t know whether they got it accurate or not.”

In a latter statement from one of Bloomberg’s press spokesman, they said they wanted micro-stamping in NY SAFE but never said anything about magazines. Hmmm.

Jacob at GunpoliticsNY.com has more on this along with some analysis. Sebastian discusses this buck-passing and the reliance on polling by some politicians in a post this afternoon. I suggest reading both.

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Boulder Airlift

March 1, 2013 by 5 Comments

Magpul has started what they are calling the Boulder Airlift. They are moving Colorado residents to the head of the line for 10-packs of PMags. This move to flood Colorado with standard capacity magazines was started by Suarez International’s One Source Tactical a few days earlier. Michael Bane has more info on that plus Magpul’s statement. He called it a classy thing to do.

If you do something classy like that you should have a classy drawing to go along with it – and they do. Using a scene reminiscent of the Berlin Airlift, Magpul is reminding Coloradans to take advantage of this offer. They also are working on similar programs for citizens in other states who are having their freedom challenged.

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Federal Firearms Legislation Introduced In The Past Week

February 7, 2013 by 2 Comments

Three new firearms related bills have been introduced since the middle of last week in Congress. Two deal with gun trafficking and one is actually a decent bill dealing with amnesty for NFA war trophies.

HR 449 – Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL)
To provide an amnesty period during which veterans and their family
members can register certain firearms in the National Firearms
Registration and Transfer Record, and for other purposes.
Referred to House Judiciary Committee, House Ways and Means Committee, and House Veterans Affairs Committee.

HR 452 – Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
Co-Sponsors:
Rep Cummings, Elijah E. [D-MD] – 2/4/2013
Rep Meehan, Patrick [R-PA] – 2/4/2013
Rep Rigell, E. Scott [R-VA] – 2/4/2013
To prevent gun trafficking. 
Referred to House Judiciary Committee.

S 179 – Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Co-Sponsor:
Sen Kirk, Mark Steven [R-IL] – 1/30/2013
To prevent gun trafficking.
Referred to Senate Judiciary Committee

Unless I am greatly mistaken, HR 452 and S 179 will be a reprise of legislation proposed by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) in the last session of Congress. The purpose of that bill was to deflect attention from Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice, and BATFE over Project Gunwalker. This time I think it is a cynical attempt to say there is bi-partisan support for gun control.

Reading the press release from Rep. Maloney on HR 452 one can’t help but notice that all the supporters of the bill that she lists are known gun control backers.

Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Association of
Prosecuting Attorneys, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the Police
Foundation, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement
Executives, the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement
Administrators, the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department, the
Maryland Chiefs of Police Association, the Baltimore Police Department,
Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office, and the Petersburg Bureau of
Police. Also in attendance were representatives from the U.S. Conference
of Mayors, the American Bar Association, CeaseFirePA, the Violence
Policy Center, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

CSGV and VPC? They are the enemies of gun rights. They have always been and always will be opposed to our gun rights. If they are in support of legislation dealing with firearms, it is prima facie suspect.

Sebastian has more on this bill here and suggests we keep our eye on it. I agree. I also think this falls under the rubric of what Michael Bane called flypaper laws in a blog post today. They are a trap for gun owners and are meant to trip us up one way or another.

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2013 SHOT Show – Day 3 With Michael Bane & Ed Head

January 25, 2013 by

I know the SHOT Show was over last week but I just came across this report from day three by Michael Bane and Ed Head. They discuss AR pistols, Nightforce scopes, the Ruger Bearcat Shopkeeper revolver in .22LR, and the growth in reloading sales. Ed Head was saying that the manufacturers he spoke with had a 50 to 80% increase in sales. With the ammo shortage, reloading is coming back strongly as an option as well as practicing with .22s.