universal background checks

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Raising Money Based Upon Lies

March 29, 2021 by 3 Comments

The Cult of Personality known as Giffords sent out a fundraising email yesterday before the quarter-end Federal Elections Commission reporting deadline. Politicians and PACs always push for more money at the end of a quarter so they can use their fundraising to say, “see, they agree with us!”

Giffords made this three claims as why it was important to give:

As Americans have dealt with a global pandemic, they’ve also had to face a worsening gun violence crisis.

In order to prevent tragedies like the ones that took place in Atlanta or Boulder, we need the Senate to pass universal background checks.

The best way we can do that is by hitting our goals so we can keep the pressure on the Senate to act.

The first thing I learned in statistics is that correlation is not causation. Indeed, through the first half of 2020, overall violent crime was actually down from the previous year which was down from the year before that. Murder rates did increase but causal factors such as the psychological impact of quarantines and the defund the police movement could lie at the core of this.

In both Atlanta and Boulder, the murderer passed a FBI NICS check. They were not buying their firearms in some back alley from an “unlicensed dealer” (sic). Indeed, Colorado has had the aforementioned panacea of universal background checks since 2013! As the law makes clear, it does apply not only to purchases but transfers. So the argument that a nationwide law regulating private sales of firearms would have prevented a mass casualty event just doesn’t hold water. Even in Newtown, the murderer first killed his own mother in order to steal her legally-purchased firearms.

Their final claim is that they need your money so they can keep lobbying the Senate to pass meaningless laws. I’m sure they do want your money as do their political consultants, their direct mail firms, their ad agencies, and others in their progressive orbit.

The one thing they won’t say and cannot say is that the only way for universal background checks to work is with universal gun registration.

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Is That Like Double Secret Probation?

March 23, 2021 by 1 Comment

Not wasting any time in not letting a tragedy go to waste, there have been renewed calls for more gun control after the murders in Boulder, Colorado. The usual suspects have weighed in as has President Biden.

President Biden is calling on the Senate to pass both so-called universal background checks and an assault weapons (sic).

President Biden on Tuesday implored the Senate to pass new gun control measures in the wake of a mass shooting that left 10 dead in Boulder, Colorado, this week.

Biden said he didn’t “want to wait another minute, let alone an hour,” to act on gun violence.

He urged the House and Senate to ban “assault weapons,” as he said he did as a senator.

“I got that done as a senator. It brought down mass shootings, we can do it again,” Biden said. “We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again.”…

The president also called on the Senate to pass two House bills that closed loopholes on background checks, including the Charleston loophole.

“These are bills that received votes with both Republicans and Democrats in the House. This is not and should not be a partisan issue. This is an American issue that will save lives, American lives. And we have to act. We should also ban assault weapons in the process,” Biden said. 

So if I understand Biden and the gun control cabal correctly, if only there was a ban on high capacity magazines and guns with cosmetics they don’t like as well as a background check on every gun transfer then we would not have another mass murder?

Sounds great until you take into account two facts that completely blow away their arguments.

Fact 1: Colorado has background checks on all firearms transfers, both public and private.

Fact 2: Colorado passed a 15-round limit on magazines back in 2013. Now it is my understanding that the Colorado Supreme Court may have invalidated that ban.

We don’t know yet how the murderer obtained the firearm at this time. Even with a ban in place, an angry, paranoid person such as this murderer is reputed to be would not let violating a gun control law stand in the way of something doing something heinous.

One last thing. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but sometimes life feels like a Matt Bracken novel where the killer is merely a pawn for more government control.

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An Inconvenient Truth

February 15, 2021 by 7 Comments

The Cult of Personality Known as Giffords sent out an email this morning. As might be expected on the anniversary of the murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, they called for more gun control.

We took it upon ourselves to fight for change by electing a gun safety majority in the House. They passed H.R. 8, the background checks bill, but it sat on Mitch McConnell’s desk every day since.

But that’s about to change. With a newly elected gun safety president and gun safety majorities in both the House and Senate, it’s finally time to make universal background checks the law of the land. And today’s a great day to say you’re still in the fight.

The inconvenient truth is that the killer obtained his firearm after passing a FBI background check. In other words, a universal background check or mandated checks on private firearm sales would not have made one bit of difference.

The killer had no criminal record because of an arrangement between the Broward County school system and the sheriff’s office. This despite being expelled for bringing a weapon to school along with other run-ins that should have resulted in a criminal record.

As noted at the time by Max Eden in the City-Journal:

But the explicit aim of Broward’s new approach to school safety was to keep students like <killer> off the police’s radar. If the Sheriff’s department didn’t know about his deeply troubling behavior, perhaps it was because they were no longer supposed to know about it.

So instead of dealing with the inconvenient truths and the deeper issues at play, the Cult of Personality Known as Giffords and their like-minded brethren including President Biden will just call for more gun control – even though none of it will stop the next mass casualty event.

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Stabbed In The Back Again

August 5, 2019 by

Eight years of Obama brought no new gun control at the federal level. Three years of President Trump has brought an unconstitutional ban on bumpstocks, no Hearing Protection Act, no national reciprocity, and now a call for more gun control in the wake of the murders in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

If he thinks that Democrats will trade gun control for funding a “the wall”, he is sadly mistaken. They will do a bait and switch saying they will support “the wall” after passing red flag laws and universal background checks (and other gun control) but then do nothing about funding the wall.

Right now I don’t give a big rat’s ass about a wall along the border that would have marginal effectiveness. I do care about any denigration of the Second Amendment and gun rights.

By the way, all indications are that virtually every mass murderer in the last 10 years has gone through a NICS check. These bills would do nothing to have prevented them from obtaining the firearm in question.

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Yes, Thank You Moms Demand Action In NC

December 20, 2018 by

Mike Bloomberg, billionaire, former mayor of New York City, erstwhile potential Democrat candidate for President, and funder of all things gun control put out this tweet yesterday evening.

Yes, thank you for your continued support of a Jim Crow era law, the pistol purchase permit system, that was intended to keep African-Americans, union members, and Republicans disarmed.

Yes, thank you for your support of red flag laws that turn Due Process on its head and that will get innocent people killed.

Yes, thank you for making our schools less safe by your continued opposition to any policy that would let trained teachers and administrators carry firearms to protect the students under their care.

Yes, thank you for supporting efforts to introduce even more government interference into private affairs by demanding universal background check.

Yes, thank you for all you do to make North Carolina a less safe place for ordinary, law abiding Tar Heels and more safe for criminals who, by definition, ignore the law.

 There is plenty more for which we can thank the North Carolina contingent of Moms Demand Action but saving lives isn’t one of them.

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Was This Intended Or Unintended?

June 12, 2018 by

Where you place paragraphs in a story makes a difference and can lead to different interpretations of your argument. Today’s Wall Street Journal provides an excellent example of it in a story on the flaws of the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The story is in the Southeast paper edition of the Journal but does not appear online. The only thing online is an infographic on the failures of the system.

Consider this paragraph.

And then there are private sales. Background checks aren’t always required when sales are made by private sellers, those people who make only occasional guns sales from private collections.

It was immediately followed by this paragraph.

Several mass-shooters have purchased guns they shouldn’t have been able to buy. 

The story by Ashby Jones then goes on to give examples of how both the Virginia Tech mass-murderer and the Sutherland Spring First Baptist mass-murderer were able to obtain their weapons, though prohibited persons, after passing a FBI NICS check. The story does detail how the Virginia court and the US Air Force had failed to submit the records for inclusion in the FBI’s databases.

By placing the second paragraph immediately after the paragraph on private sales, the reader is at first led to believe that the mass-murderers obtained their firearms from a private seller which we know was not the case.

If that second paragraph had added “due to the failure to submit disqualifying records to the NICS database” or “even though they passed background checks”, then it would be understood that the killers obtained their firearms due to a failure of the system and not due to the negligence or greed of a private seller.

Is this a case of unintended juxtaposition? Is it a case of tight editing for brevity in the second paragraph? Or is it, more problematically, a case of using the structure of the story to convey an argument for so-called universal background checks.

I don’t know but I do know that the wrong impression is initially given by the structure of the story.

If this came from the New York Times or the Washington Post I would say it was intended to mislead. Since the Wall Street Journal tends to be more neutral on firearms issues, I could go either way. Nonetheless, this is a case of the mainstream media, intentionally or unintentionally, pushing the narrative for universal background checks which is wrong.

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Loophole Here, Loophole There, Everything’s A Freaking Loophole

March 27, 2018 by 6 Comments

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When dealing with the enemies of freedom everything they don’t approve of is a loophole.

Internet loophole? Check.

Gun show loophole? Check.

Background check loophole? Check.

Sen. Richard “I served in Vietnam (not!)” Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) have come up with a new loophole that MUST be closed. That is the ammunition sale loophole. To that end, they have introduced the Ammunition Background Check Act (S.2627 / HR 5383) The bill would require instant background checks for the purchase of ammunition.

Excerpts from their joint press release:

“Ammunition sales should be subject to the same legal requirements as firearm sales, and that includes instant background checks. The same laws that prevent dangerous individuals from purchasing firearms also prohibit them from amassing arsenals of ammunition, with one major loophole: there are no background checks for ammunition sales to enforce the law. Closing this ludicrous loophole is a common sense component of a comprehensive strategy to reduce gun violence,” said Blumenthal.


“This common-sense legislation simply enforces existing federal law, and will make it harder for criminals to amass hundreds of rounds of ammunition without so much as sharing their first name with a gun store clerk,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Closing this absurd loophole will not by itself stop the next mass shooting tragedy. But this popular approach must be part of our larger strategy for ending gun violence. Studies show it can help keep ‘bad guys with guns’ from perpetrating another mass slaughter like the one we witnessed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in my Broward County community, or the thousands of other acts of gun violence that devastate communities across the country. It takes more than just a gun to take an innocent life. It also takes bullets. We need to do all we can to make sure neither of them ends up in the wrong hands.”

There are enough gun control buzzwords in those two paragraphs that you would be an automatic winner in buzzword bingo!

While the bill text is not yet available, their release indicates that the purchase of ammo would be through a FFL who would be required to do a NICS check or, if the seller was not licensed, then the seller would have to have a FFL conduct the NICS check. Since I don’t have the bill text yet, there is no word whether or not components would be require background checks.

If components are not regulated (and they should not be), then the enemies of freedom will have multiple new loopholes to rail about: the smokeless powder loophole, the brass loophole, the primer loophole, etc., etc.

For those not old enough to remember, after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968 all ammunition sales including .22 rimfire ammo were required to be logged into a bound book. The requirement for .22 rimfire ammo sale logging was repealed in 1982. Finally, the Firearms Owner Protection Act of 1986 finally repealed the requirement that ammo sales be logged in a bound book. The repeal of that requirement was supported by the ATF as they said it had little law enforcement value. While Bluementhal and Wasserman-Schultz quote a number of academics in support of their bill, they don’t quote anyone in law enforcement which is telling.

This is a ridiculous bill brought by two ridiculous legislators. It should be relegated to the scrapheap of history just like they should.

H/T  The Captain’s Journal

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Big News Out Of Nevada On Question 1

November 9, 2016 by

One of the biggest supporters of the universal background check initiative, Question 1, in Nevada has changed his mind. Casino owner Steve Wynn had given $50,000 to Nevadans for Background Checks. This is the Bloomberg front group that was pushing the universal background check initiative in the state.

As you can hear in the video below, Wynn changed his mind after two of his executives explained all the ramifications of the law.



The NRA released this statement in response.

“This stunning reversal by Steve Wynn – a member of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control advisory board — could be a game changer,” said Robert Uithoven, Nevadans for Freedom campaign director. “Like many unsuspecting Nevadans, Mr. Wynn believed the Bloomberg campaign’s false claims that Question 1 would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and make Nevadans safer. After taking a closer look at the poorly worded initiative, Mr. Wynn told Fox News he now opposes Question 1, along with Governor Sandoval, Congressman Heck, Attorney General Laxalt and 16 of the 17 elected sheriffs in Nevada. ‘I don’t think anyone knows the extent of the overreach that [Question 1] would allow.’ Wynn went on to concede that the NRA Nevadans for Freedom is right when we say that this measure will criminalize the commonplace activities of Nevada’s law-abiding gun owners. The truth is Question 1 will not make Nevadans any safer. It will instead cost law-abiding citizens time, money, and freedom.”

Coming as it did just before Election Day, I am unsure of the real impact of this change of heart given the extent of early voting in Nevada.


My friend J.D. Smith of the AR-15 Podcast told me last week that he thought that despite Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar ad campaign the outcome was looking better for Question 1 failing. J.D. attributed this to a strong grassroots effort. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that he is correct.

UPDATE: Steve Wynn’s conversion on the road to Damascus was too little and too late. Question 1 passed in Nevada by 50.45% to 49.55%. In real terms, the vote was 558,586 yes and 548,685 no.

I have real qualms about whether the SHOT Show should be continued to be held in Las Vegas. The Orange County Convention Center in Orlando is larger and the area has approximately the same number of hotel rooms.

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Why Are These Official Hotels For The SHOT Show?

October 16, 2016 by 7 Comments

The SHOT Show always has a number of “official” hotels where their travel company has negotiated special rates for attendees and exhibitors. One of the pluses of staying at one of these on-the-Strip hotels is that there is shuttle bus service to the Sands Expo Center.

For those that are not aware of it, Question 1 on the ballot in Nevada is on universal background checks. It would criminalize the sale or transfer of a firearm between private individuals unless a background check was performed by a FFL. While there are limited exceptions to this, the first offense is a gross misdemeanor and the second offense is a Class C felony.

This initiative was proposed by Nevadans for Background Checks which is a front group for Michael Bloomberg and his Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors. Tara Paone is a listed as a director of this group. As Jeff Knox notes, she is also the Treasurer for Everytown and was listed as a director in Washington State’s I-594 universal background check initiative.

I am firmly of the belief that if this initiative passes that the SHOT Show, Safari Club International, and other firearms related organizations should forever move their trade shows and conventions out of that state. You don’t reward states that don’t respect your civil rights. The LGBTQ community is very good at this.

That got me to questioning who was financially supporting the initiative and who was funding the opposition. Here is where it gets interesting. There was the big money (over $100,000) donations from Everytown and from Seattle billionaire Nick Hanauer. Hanauer spent over $1 million in a successful effort to pass Washington’s I-594 initiative. These type of donations were expected. What I would not have expected were substantial donations from a number of the casino and hotel companies.

  • MGM Resorts International – $25,000 – 1/22/2016
  • Caesar’s Enterprise Services LLC – $25,000 – 12/29/2015
  • Wynn Resorts Ltd. – $50,000 – 9/29/2015

There is nothing like biting the hand that feeds you. Just so you are aware, let’s see what hotels and casinos belong to each of these groups. I’ve noted whether it was an official hotel or not as well.

MGM Resorts International 

  • ARIA
  • Bellagio – Yes
  • Vdara
  • MGM Grand – Yes
  • Skylofts at MGM Grand
  • The Signature at MGM Grand
  • Mandalay Bay
  • Delano Las Vegas
  • The Mirage – Yes
  • Monte Carlo – Yes
  • New York – New York – Yes
  • Luxor – Yes
  • Excalibur -Yes
  • Circus Circus – Yes
  • Anthology Suites & Villas
  • Bally’s – Yes
  • Caesars Palace – Yes
  • The Cromwell
  • Flamingo – Yes
  • Harrah’s – Yes
  • The LINQ – Yes
  • Paris – Yes
  • Planet Hollywood – Yes
  • Rio
*Caesar’s Enterprise Services LLC is a spin-off from Caesars Entertainment. It was set up in 2014 to protect the company in case they had to declare bankruptcy.
  • Wynn Las Vegas
  • Encore
So what does this leave in the way of official hotels whose owners have not donated to Bloomberg’s universal background check initiative?
  • The Ventian – owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands
  • The Palazzo – owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands
  • Elara – owned by Hilton
  • Hilton Grand Vacations – owned by Hilton
  • SLS Las Vegas – owned by Sam Nazarian’s SBE Corp.
  • Stratosphere – owned by American Casino & Entertainment Properties LLC
  • The Cosmopolitan – owned by Blackstone Group (investment bankers)
  • Treasure Island – privately owned by Phil Ruffin
  • Tropicana – owned by Hilton
  • Trump Las Vegas – owned by you know who
  • Westin – owned by Marriott International
If you are staying in one of these hotels, you have a decent assumption that you are not subsidizing the anti-gun forces. It makes me glad we finally settled on the Westin instead of Bally’s.
There are plenty of other hotels, motels, and casino properties where you can stay in Las Vegas that are not part of the cabal trying to steal your rights. You might want to go here to check on alternatives.
This leaves the opposition to the initiative. The NRA-ILA has been very active from what I have read but Bloomberg has bought most of the air time. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the NRA Nevadans for Freedom has spent about $140,000 on ads. This contrasts with the $800,000 spent by the Bloomberg group. I have read that the NSSF’s #GunVote is doing some work against the initiative but I’m not sure what. I do have a question on various Nevada shooting forums asking about it.
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“Don’t NYC My Maine Gun Rights”

September 24, 2016 by 1 Comment

My late father lived in Maine for many years after he retired from the Army. Even though he was a born and bred Tar Heel he was accepted by the locals. He lived in Medomak which is on Muscongus Bay.

I spent my (first) honeymoon in the Rangeley Region at a camp on Mooselookmeguntic Lake. Rosanne and I gave serious consideration to moving to Maine. We joined the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and took a local paper. We never did make the move but I still love the State of Maine. I guess that is why I am so afraid for them with Bloomberg’s money trying to buy gun control there.

Ginny Simone does a good job of showing how Bloomberg and his money is trying to buy the election. I’m glad that there are organizations like the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. politicians like Gov. Paul LePage, and others like my friend Genie Jennings who will be speaking at GRPC fighting this tooth and nail.