Category: RKBA

NSSF PRAISES SENATE BIPARTISAN OUTDOOR RECREATION ACT

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the firearm industry trade association, praised the introduction of the bipartisan Outdoor Recreation Act. This legislation, introduced by U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), would increase and improve outdoor recreation opportunities across the nation while improving infrastructure and driving economic growth in rural communities.

“The National Shooting Sports Foundation commends Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Manchin and Ranking Member Sen. John Barrasso for introducing this vitally important outdoor recreation package,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “In particular, NSSF appreciates the bipartisan measures included in this legislation that would require the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to ensure that both agencies have at least one qualifying recreational shooting range in each National Forest and BLM district. Recreational shooting is tied to approximately 85 percent of the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes currently being paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers, making it a major driving contributor to wildlife conservation. This legislation would ensure that recreational marksmanship can be practiced in accessible and safe environments while also benefiting conservation.”

Senator Manchin explained in a press release that the Outdoor Recreation Act would support outdoor recreation economies and provide an economic boost to local communities while preserving public lands for future generations. Sen. Barrasso added that the bill not only establishes public access to shooting ranges on USFS and BLM lands, but also ensures access to public lands and modernizes campgrounds.

Specifically, the legislation would direct the Forest Service to issue guidance for recreational climbing in designated Wilderness Areas and require the Forest Service and BLM to designate many new shooting ranges on National Forests and BLM land.

William A. Jacobson-
My appearance on Chicago’s Morning Answer:
“if you can’t defend yourself in those circumstances and the full weight of the state and the full weight of the media is going to come down on you, then we are in a really bad place”

 

Free States Must Defend the Right to Self-Defense

The jury is still out as I write this; I wish I could be confident that our justice system will provide what it promises and that the unjustly accused will leave the courthouse wearing a smile instead of handcuffs. Kyle Rittenhouse, who went into the void created by the cowardly leftist officials who refused to protect decent citizens from the militarized wing of the Democrat Party, might well be convicted.

He got dragged through a legal nightmare, and if that’s all that happens to him, then that’s the best-case scenario. Us lawyers understand that evidence and law are not what determine jury verdicts; they are merely factors in a much bigger picture. Instead of facing life in prison, Kyle ought to get a medal for taking out several degenerates, including a promising potential Lincoln Project intern.

If you are looking for justice, you won’t necessarily find it in a courthouse.

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While they’re being simplistic when it comes to actual ‘use of force’ and do the standard clueless journalist bit about confusing “Self Defense” with “Stand Your Ground”,  at least they’re acknowledging that self defense and concealed carry are ‘normal’.

Amid crime surge in Seattle, some take steps to defend themselves

Reports of violent crime this year in Seattle have already surpassed the historic high number that were reported in the city last year.

It is perhaps not a coincidence then that more people are turning to ways to defend themselves and opting to stand their ground.

From self-defense classes to skyrocketing gun sales, more people are looking for ways to defend themselves amid concerns that they are on their own when it comes to random street crime.

Just a few weeks ago, Morgan Zion, who lives in Seattle, could be heard on cellphone video standing her ground from an attacker.

“I hate to be the person who says, ‘Oh Seattle has gotten so much worse,'” she said. “But it has.”

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Support For Handgun Ban Hits Record Low As Gun Violence, Sales Soar During Pandemic, Poll Finds

Americans’ support for a complete ban on handguns is the lowest on record, according to a new Gallup poll, part of a wider dip in support for stricter gun control measures as gun sales, violent crime and gun violence soared during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Less than one in five (19%) Americans supported a complete ban on handguns in the U.S., except for police and authorized persons, according to the poll of 823 adults living in all 50 states, conducted between October 1 and 19.

It’s the lowest level of support since Gallup began polling the issue in 1980 and down six points from last year, the poll found.

While no political party surveyed indicated majority support for a ban on handguns, Gallup found marked political differences—40% of Democrats were in favor compared to just 14% of Independents and 6% of Republicans—with the overall drop in support “largely attributable to political independents,” which has fallen 16 points since 2019.

A slim majority of Americans support stricter gun control laws—52%—the poll found, the lowest point since 2014 and down from 67% in 2018 after the Parkland, Florida school shooting.

Political differences are more stark regarding support for stricter gun laws, Gallup found, and near unanimous support from Democrats (91%) contrasts with less than half (45%) of Independents and fewer than a quarter (24%) of Republicans.

While more Democrats and Republicans supported stricter gun control laws this year—rising 6 and 2 points, respectively—a 15-point drop in support from Independents, coupled with a 14-point drop among Republicans the year before, drove the overall level of support down.

KEY BACKGROUND

Last year was one of the deadliest for gun violence in decades, with violent crime rising for the first time in four years. Gun sales hit an all-time high during the pandemic and nearly 23 million were sold during 2020 alone, a two-thirds jump from the year before. While sales have dropped in 2021, they remain well above pre-pandemic levels, and researchers are divided over whether the surge is responsible for the increase in violence.

BIG NUMBER

31%. That’s how many American adults say they own a gun, according to Gallup. While this figure has remained unchanged in decades, the reasons people give for doing so have. Some 88% said they own a gun to protect themselves against crime, up from 67% in 2005. Protection supplanted target shooting (70%) as the dominant reason for owning a gun, Gallup found, which gained four points since 2005. The number of Americans citing hunting as a reason for owning a gun (56%) dropped two points from 2005.

Unless demoncrap goobernor Wolf has an ephiphany, my guess is he vetoes this, but that’s politics.

Bill to Make Pennsylvania 22nd Constitutional Carry State Heads to Gov. Wolf

Legislation that would make Pennsylvania the 22nd constitutional carry state passed the state house yesterday and is heading to Gov. Tom Wolf’s (D) desk.

The Associated Press reports that the legislation would do away with any municipal-level permit requirement for open carry and end the statewide requirement that law-abiding citizens get a permit in order to conceal carry.

ABC 27 describes the legislation, House Bill 565, as “polarizing.” Republicans support the bill, Democrats largely oppose it.

House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff (R) commented on HB565, saying, “The legislation to assert Pennsylvanian’s constitutional right to carry firearms without a permit protects the Second Amendment and Article 1, sec. 21 state constitutional rights of legal gun owners. The bill changes nothing regarding who can legally own a gun and takes nothing away from law enforcement from going after those owning and using guns illegally.”

State rep. Jordan Harris (D) voiced opposition to the bill.

Harris said, “We’re wasting time on a piece of legislation that’s gonna be vetoed. We know there’s no votes to override the governor’s veto, we’re literally wasting time when Pennsylvanians have sent us here to address the issues that are of the utmost importance to them and I personally believe this is not one of them.”

The other 21 states with constitutional carry are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

That’s Not How Research Works

The NRA calling research papers “anti-gun” may sometimes come across as dismissive or reflexive, or both. Some researchers work to keep their papers sterile, no matter their findings. Others grant themselves leeway to be more bombastic, particularly when it comes to developing theories that explain their findings. Researchers from the University of Central Missouri and the University of Alabama at Birmingham posted a paper online that makes their anti-gun slant abundantly clear through both their text and their model specifications.

David B. Johnson and Joshua J. Robinson posted their paper, “Gun Dealer Density and its Effect on Homicide,” online earlier this month. It has not been peer-reviewed or published in a journal. Johnson and Robinson make several emotional, hyperbolic claims about gun ownership and gun dealers that would likely not be accepted if written in a research paper turned in by a student. The variables excluded from their preferred models initially suggest unfamiliarity with crime data or research, but the use of some variables in later models shows the exclusion was by design. The variables that were included in their preferred model suggest problems with specificity and the exaggeration of small changes in rates shows a commitment to their narrative over sincere analysis.

Let’s start at the beginning of this 32-page paper – a count that excludes the abstract, references, and appendices. In the first paragraph, Johnson and Robinson utilize the tragedy at Sandy Hook to categorize the difference in the number of “gun-related deaths” per year between the individual years 2000 and 2019. The authors make no mention of the fact that most “gun-related deaths” are self-inflicted, or that the population of the U.S. grew by about 50 million people between those years. They also forgot to mention that the homicide rate was lower from 2009 through 2014 than it was in 2000 but that’s a detail that doesn’t promote gun-grabbing.

As is the state of existing research: “Much of the literature on firearms – particularly concerning its connection to homicide and crime – is full of null and mixed results.” Johnson and Robinson set out to resolve that unacceptable problem, which just must be the result of a misunderstanding of the relationship between gun availability and homicides, by “creating” a new metric: the number of federal firearm licensees per mile. They do not differentiate between types of FFLs or volume of sales, so a small home-based FFL that transfers a few guns a year is treated the same as a large-volume retailer like Cabela’s.

Instead, they correlate the number of FFLs per mile with the number of NICS checks. NICS checks, readers may know, are the background checks dealers are required by law to run before a sale. The authors correlated required background checks with those required to run background checks. Groundbreaking.

To validate their measure of gun dealer density, they compare metrics using heat maps. Theirs is the only metric that shows north-central Colorado with a high density, and it includes several communities that suffered mass murder attacks, so theirs must be the best. These professors actually used a small number of rare, high-profile incidents to validate a measure they’re using in an analysis spanning decades and the entire contiguous United States. That isn’t a validation – it’s a confirmation of bias.

Alaska and Hawaii are excluded for some reason. Oh, and any year prior to 2003 is also excluded. Their key variable is lagged, for some reason. The authors claim that NICS data is available from 2004 on, but the FBI has data from November 1998 through the present readily available. Also readily available are variables known to be associated with crime in generals and homicides specifically – variables like law enforcement resources, arrest rate, crime itself, poverty rate, unemployment rate, and alcohol consumption.

They tout the effect of gun density they supposedly found, but this model found that homicide increases as income increases and decreases as the percent of men in a population increases.

Those are backwards. Think about it. Men commit most homicides, and crime is known to be associated with lower incomes or poverty. It does not make sense for there to be less homicide as there are more men in a community or there to be more homicide as income increases.

Those are the results of the choice the researchers made, and they clearly made those choices to find a connection between firearms and a negative outcome.

They got what they wanted, but it’s a sadly transparent effort.

The authors seem to believe that “secondary markets” in places like Chicago contribute to violent acts, despite all guns sold by an FFL requiring a background check whether the gun is new or used. They also think that the ATF-reported “time to crime” that shows criminals use a firearm, on average, more than 10 years after it was legally sold, is irrelevant because gun dealers “regularly sell used guns.” Dealers are required to run a NICS check on used guns, too, and criminals don’t buy their guns from dealers. Johnson and Robinson are aware of this research, but it doesn’t support an anti-gun narrative so it’s discounted.

Comments on this paper could easily fill more space than we have. We’ll leave readers with this statement from the authors: “The decrease in the percentage of corporate retailers in these communities also may indicate an increase in the percentage of nearby dealers willing to bend or break federal gun laws.”

That’s not a good way for FFLs to stay in business – and nothing invites ATF and FBI scrutiny quite like breaking federal law.

The researchers may be well aware of that fact and willing to ignore it. They’ve certainly demonstrated their willingness to ignore reality throughout their paper.

I briefly commented on this awhile back.
This is a better look into the flaws of the underlying ‘research’.

Fatal Flaw In Ph.D. Thesis On Second Amendment Suppressing First Amendment

The Atlantic has been on an anti-Second Amendment tear lately. After a couple of pieces by David Frum, which I’ve addressed before, they have an article (Archived) that employs the newfangled theory that the Second Amendment somehow threatens the First Amendment. We saw this in the ACLU amicus brief in the NYSRPA v. Bruen case, which Cam addressed recently.

This article goes one step further. It cites “research” by two parties to make broad claims about how open carry protests chill free speech. The crux of the article is as follows:

Some protests involving open carry firearms have resulted in violence. The presence of firearms at a protest causes some people to be scared. Due to this fear, they are unable to express their opinions freely. Therefore – you can guess where this is headed – open carry at protests must be ‘regulated’.

Lest we forget, this argument has already been employed in the Campus Carry debate, that concealed carrying of guns inside a classroom would somehow stifle discussions. There is no evidence that those fears materialized. Yet, that argument is being laundered and reused against open carry at public protests, with calls to “further study” the chilling effect of concealed carry.

The article states:

What most people do not realize is that the Second Amendment has become, in recent years, a threat to the First Amendment. People cannot freely exercise their speech rights when they fear for their lives. […] Diana Palmer, one of the authors of this article, conducted a study […] found that participants were far less likely to attend a protest, carry a sign, vocalize their views, or bring children to protests if they knew firearms would be present.

There are two underlying studies this article is based on. The first one is from Everytown/ACLED, and the second one is a Ph.D. dissertation by Diana Palmer, one of the authors of the article. Everytown’s research is shoddy; it has been taken apart thoroughly before. Their new “research” needs to be tackled, but I will focus on the Ph.D. dissertation, which you can download and look at yourself here.

The abstract of the dissertation states the following:

In this mixed-methods study, 1,205 participants were surveyed about their likelihood of engaging in First Amendment behaviors at a protest with and without firearms and asked to explain what factors they considered when selecting their answers. […] In the quantitative element of the study, differences in expressive behavior were analyzed in the condition with no firearms and the condition with firearms. The analysis showed that participants were less likely to engage in expressive behaviors when firearms were present.

The abstract only talks about public protest scenarios in which guns are either present or not present. I looked through the dissertation, and found that it lacks any questions on weapons that aren’t firearms. Participants were never asked what they would do if knives, swords, clubs, pepper spray, brass knuckles, bike locks, etc. would be present. Any chilling effect of non-firearms weapons on assembly is not considered in the dissertation.

Weapons aren’t the only things that people can react to negatively. Participants weren’t asked what they would do if there were head-to-toe incognito, masked protestors at an event. Anyone following the news knows that antifa mobs have been showing up at “protests” in all-black, covering their faces while violating journalists’ First Amendment right to record them. Likewise, would people show up to a protest if there were people wearing Klan hoods?

Another topic that wasn’t addressed is crowd density. Personally, I avoid crowds and wouldn’t be surprised if survey participants would factor in high crowd density as a deterrent… if they had been asked about it.

Lastly, the timing of a protest was not included in the surveys; there are people who avoid “protests” at 1 AM. Too bad the dissertation didn’t ask about that.

These are questions that should have been part of the research, and the Ph.D. advisor or members of the committee should have caught these misses. This is a fatal flaw, in my opinion, especially given what the dissertation lays out in conclusion:

The first recommendation is that the carrying of firearms at protests should be regulated separately from other forms of open carry.

Given all the important questions that were missed, I take objection to the singling out of open carry at protests. If it’s a matter of regulating open carry at protests with, say, having your gun unloaded, mag out, chamber flag in, that’s one thing. But I doubt that’s the sort of benign regulation the writers of The Atlantic piece are asking for.

Going back to the article in The Atlantic, the writers also want to study concealed carry:

Research thus far has focused on open display of firearms, but further study is needed to evaluate the public safety concerns that may still be present when protesters or counterprotesters bring concealed firearms to demonstrations.

Unfortunately, this looks like agenda-driven, or at a minimum, bias-distorted research to me. Watching the press amplify it is unfunny to say the least.

Permitless concealed carry on the move in Ohio

Ohio lawmakers could vote next week to relax gun laws

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WXIX) – Ohio lawmakers could vote as soon as next week to relax current gun laws by waiving training and permit requirements to carry concealed guns.

If passed into law, House Bill 227 would make a concealed weapons permit optional, including the mandatory eight hours of training, and eliminate the current requirement that people promptly notify police officers they are carrying a concealed weapon.

The primary sponsor of the bill is Republican lawmaker, Rep. Tom Brinkman of Mt. Lookout.

The other sponsor is a Republican from Delaware County, Rep. Kris Jordan of Ostrander.

“It’s our Second Amendment rights. Government is too restrictive. People deserve their rights,” Brinkman tells FOX19 NOW.

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If more guns caused more crime, we would know it.

BLUF:
The violent crime rate fell by about 38 percent over two decades while the number of guns sold each year almost doubled. The implied number of gun owners also doubled. If anything, this data shows that firearms sales cause a decrease in violent crime.

Gun Ownership versus Crime in the US 2000-2019

I’ve seen analysis that relates guns and crime. In particular, the data looks at the growing number of firearms in civilian hands in the United States. It compares gun ownership with the rate of violent crime across the country. Unfortunately, that data is a few years old. It is easy to get raw numbers, but it is very hard to get good data. This is what I found.

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So the leftist media have crap-for-brains….
Do I need to cue the meme again?

ABC News Touts Gun, Ammo Taxes To Fight “Gun Violence”

For the past several days, my colleague Tom Knighton has been covering the ABC News series “Rethinking Gun Violence” and doing a great job of pointing out the bias in the network’s reporting. I’m going to tag in and take on ABC’s latest report in the series, which is all about the supposedly wonderful benefits of taxing the exercise of a constitutional right; in this case, slapping additional taxes on the purchase of firearms and ammunition.

Here is how advocates argue that a tax could be used as one policy lever in a holistic approach to ameliorating gun violence — not with the goal of keeping people from buying guns, but rather to claw back revenue from industry profits to raise billions for American communities.

Does ABC News even understand how taxes work? Any additional tax imposed on the purchase of guns and ammunition doesn’t “claw back revenue” from gun makers. It simply takes more money out of the pocket of gun owners. And why should law-abiding gun owners be singled out for a special tax if the money is supposed to be used to increase public safety for all?

A particularly bloody summer in California this year led lawmakers to propose a tax on guns and ammo to generate revenue specifically to fund community-based prevention programs. AB1223, which would have added an excise tax of 10% on handgun sales and 11% on long guns, precursor parts and ammunition, fell four votes short of advancing by super majority in the state Assembly last summer, but it’s set to be re-introduced in January.

“This tax is for funding gun violence prevention programs,” California Assembly ember Marc Levine, a Democrat who helped draft the proposed legislation, told ABC News. “It’s something everyone can agree on.”

Everyone? I don’t think so. There are certainly plenty of gun owners who are opposed.

Republican opponents of the bill have argued it’s unconstitutional.

“It is a clear violation of the First Amendment,” Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, told ABC News. “It is unconstitutional to require an excise tax, insurance, any monetary requirement before someone exercises an enumerated constitutional right.”

And even some on the Left see this for what it is; a shameless attempt by anti-gun politicians and the gun control lobby to go after legal gun owners instead of actually focusing on violent criminals.

“Unfortunately we have very little information, very little data to work with — there have not been that many really high-quality studies trying to look at this issue,” Robert McClelland, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told ABC News. A tax like the one proposed in California “really punishes people who are high-volume users, who are going to tend to be target shooters or hunters.”

“I don’t know if those people are really the ones that are responsible for most gun violence, but that doesn’t sound likely,” he added. “So an ammunition tax seems like it’s misdirected.”

As for any potential decrease in sales resulting from a tax, according to McClelland, “People who are on the borderline between making a purchase and not making a purchase, to that extent, yes, you would see fewer purchases. I would expect a much larger effect to be people would would simply go to private sales for used handguns and used firearms.”

I’m sure the gun control lobby has an answer for that too. Maybe a ban on private sales or transfers altogether?

I can’t help but wonder what the bean-counters and even reporters at ABC News would think about a special tax on each and every broadcast; something like 10-11% of all the commercial revenue generated, with the proceeds being directed at efforts to combat online disinformation.

My guess is that the network brass would be hollering about unconstitutional attacks on a free press, but I’d be happy to test that hypothesis if any congresscritter would like to conduct an experiment.

So the leftist media are deceitful…Cue the meme.

See the source image

Without False Claims About The Risk of Concealed Handgun Permit Holders, The Left Has Nothing

Preface: Last Friday, the National Law Journal ran an op-ed by Lisa Vicens and John Donohue with many errors in it regarding a case that the U.S. Supreme Court heard last Wednesday on New York’s concealed handgun law.

The article gave readers very inaccurate information on the academic research regarding the risk of crime by concealed handgun permit holders. This false claim of public safety is really all the state of New York has to base its case on. The left-leaning National Law Journal, a business partner with Michael Bloomberg, is unwilling to respond to repeated requests to correct the record on these extreme inaccuracies, so we are publishing our response here at Townhall. Unfortunately, all the judges, lawyers, and law professors who read the National Law Journal won’t hear the other side of the argument.

Our Piece: “The last thing we need is the infusion of additional guns into New York City,” said New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea on Sunday. After the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen last Wednesday. New York’s legal team argued to the Court that this would worsen gun violence.

 New York is one of seven “May-Issue” states where officials can turn down carry permit requests for any reason (or no reason) at all. The Court is considering replacing this discretionary process with objective “Shall-Issue” rules. That way, people can get a permit as long as they reach a certain age, have no criminal background, pay the fees, and complete any required training.

Since 1976, 18 states eliminated “proper cause” requirements, and gun control advocates have consistently predicted disaster. But in state after state, concealed handgun permit holders have proved to be extremely law-abiding, and Right-to-Carry states have never even held a legislative hearing to consider moving back to “proper cause.”

Those same fears were raised again and again during Wednesday’s oral arguments. Justice Stephen Breyer speculated: “People of good moral character who start drinking a lot and who may be there for a football game or — or some kind of soccer game can get pretty angry at each other. And if they each have a concealed weapon, who knows?”

But, with 21.5 million permit holders and laws over many decades, you should have seen that example at least once. We haven’t. 

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I’ve posted two of Professor Yamane’s articles here, and here that indicate he’s an ‘honest broker’ when it comes to his research. Seems some others have noticed it as well.

Wake Forest Professor Views Recent Gun Buying In Interesting Way

It seems that every time we see any research about guns, it’s focused on negative things. There’s very little research that seems to look at guns from a positive standpoint, and that is why a lot of gun rights advocates look at researches in an adversarial manner. After all, when you set yourself up in opposition to a deeply held principle, what do you expect?

That’s something that is going to play on people’s minds as researchers look at the surge in gun buying over the last two years. After all, more and more people are buying guns and a lot of folks want to know why.

A researcher at Wake Forest University, though, says he starts from a different place than many of his colleagues.

Sociology professor David Yamane is unique among social scientists in understanding American gun culture on its own terms, from the inside out, especially the normality of gun ownership and use for individuals with diverse religious, racial, gender, and sexual identities.…

Why are people buying more guns?

Over the past half-century, the center of gravity of America’s historic gun culture has evolved from hunting and recreational shooting to armed self-defense. This can be seen in the liberalization of concealed carry laws, the changes in gun advertisements, and in the many new products and services offered to satisfy the self-defense market.

Yamane isn’t wrong here. Whereas guns were once predominantly about hunting and plinking, now guns are focused primarily on self-defense. Hunting is still a large segment of the market, sure, but most hunters also buy self-defense weapons why a number of those focused on self-defense have little interest in hunting.

Interestingly, Yamane’s answer is devoid of a lot of what we typically hear. There’s no talk of fear or paranoia or racism in Yamane’s claim, that’s likely because Yamane starts at a different place when it comes to guns.

What makes your research on guns unique?

I have spent more than 10 years studying guns in America. I’m able to speak to individuals and organizations across the spectrum of opinions on guns. My work begins with the foundational premise that guns are normal and normal people use guns. This is a dramatic departure from standard social scientific approaches that view gun owners as deviant and focus exclusively on negative outcomes associated with guns such as crime, injury and death.

So, basically, Yamane admits what we already suspect, that most supposed gun researchers think we’re deviants to some degree and simply don’t care to look at how guns are beneficial.

He does things differently, which is why he’s not tripping over himself to make the case that a surge in gun buying is because of people being afraid of everything.

Now, I do think people being scared has driven a lot to buy guns. That’s not a controversial position in and of itself. Some may make the claim that it’s driven by racism–“Oh, you’re afraid of all those black people might come and kill you, aren’t you?”–but people being concerned for their own safety makes sense.

Yet without research showing that, I suspect Yamane isn’t interested in speculating.

Meanwhile, he also points out that while gun buying has increased year after year, violent crime rates fluctuate, showing that the prevalence of firearms alone simply cannot account for the violent crime rate being what it is year over year. There has to be more going on.

Frankly, he’s right and it’s nice to see someone in academia that doesn’t treat gun owners like villains.

Hard Drive: Joe Biden Thinks ‘2A is Being Badly Interpreted’

Buried in the broad-ranging material found on the hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop—a copy of which has been obtained by AmmoLand News—is a view of how Joe Biden looks at the Second Amendment, with reports from his daily newsletter titled “Office of Vice President Joe Biden News Briefing,” published when the Delaware Democrat was no longer serving as vice president, and before he entered the campaign.

This newsletter, produced five days a week by Bulletin Intelligence LLC, based in Reston, Va., is a treasure trove of news and daily Biden updates, evidently published to keep Biden relevant to anyone reading. AmmoLand reached out to Bulletin Intelligence for comment, but there was no response.

A note on each newsletter said Bulletin Intelligence LLC gathers content “from thousands of newspapers, national magazines, national and local television programs, radio broadcasts, social-media platforms and additional forms of open-source data.” The Biden newsletters are no longer available online. But the file remains on Hunter Biden’s hard drive.

Links to various “Biden in the News” stories over the course of several months in 2018 and early 2019 reveal that the former vice president was busy on Twitter following a school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas and five weeks later following a shooting at the newspaper offices of the Capitol Gazette newspaper.

Following the school shooting, Biden sent what might be considered a “boilerplate” reaction declaring, “Enough is enough is enough. Decent people have to take a stand. These are our children.”

In the aftermath of the newspaper office attack, Biden was again on Twitter, stating, “Another shooting. Another night in America where a father, a wife, a friend, a neighbor won’t be coming home. We can’t accept this. It must end. Congress must act.”

They are the sort of messages an anti-gunner would tweet, following the established dictum of “never let a crisis go to waste.”

According to The Hill, as noted in the newsletter, Biden declared during a “discussion” with Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, “I think the Second Amendment is being badly interpreted. It’s not consistent with what our Founders intended.”

This from the man who repeatedly insisted there were certain types of gun prohibitions in effect at the time the Second Amendment was written. It was a claim even the Washington Post Fact Checker refuted, giving Biden Four Pinocchios in the process, essentially calling the former vice president a liar.

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People who believe a person so mentally defective they’re intent on committing mayhem will be stopped by a law requiring a permit to carry a concealed gun, are mentally defective themselves.
And the Reverend Doctor is retired from pastoring? Good.

Pastor Blames Permitless Carry After Man Points Gun In Church

One of the many downsides of having a media class that’s largely ignorant about (if not downright hostile towards) gun ownership and gun laws is that many reporters are unable or unwilling to push back against questionable claims made by gun control supporters and those who take a dim view of the right to keep and bear arms. Case in point; a Nashville pastor believes that, were it not for Tennessee’s new permitless carry law, which took effect earlier this year, a man never would have pulled out a gun during the Sunday service at a north Nashville church last Sunday.

“This is the situation we find ourselves in, in a state that has passed laws that make it possible for persons to carry guns who have not undergone any type of background check and does not have to have any training and no permit,” said Rev. Dr. Judy Cummings, a recently retired pastor.

She says this latest incident and other gun violence should give state leaders reason to reconsider the permitless carry law.

I hate to break it to the pastor, but the guy who waved his gun around in church is currently facing 57 charges of felony aggravated assault, which is a pretty good indication that authorities don’t believe his actions were covered by the state’s permitless carry law.

To local television station WKRN’s credit, while reporters didn’t push back on Cummings’ statement directly, they at least sought a second opinion.

On the other hand, Bob Allen, who is director of training at Royal Range in Bellevue believes Sunday’s incident is not a direct cause of permitless carry.

“That has nothing to do with permitless carry. Zero,” said Allen. “That was either somebody who was either a crook or who might have been intellectually disabled — had something going on in the brain and just walked in there and pulled a gun out.”

The suspect allegedly declared that he was Jesus and made other disturbing comments that would indicate he’s not mentally well, but no matter his motivation, Tennessee’s permitless carry law wasn’t responsible for his actions. Depending on the suspect’s previous criminal history or any mental health prohibitions, it might have been legal for him to own and carry the firearm in public, but private property is another matter entirely. If the leaders of Nashville Light Mission Pentecostal Church wanted to ban guns from the premises, that’s their right, but it’s unclear if the church had any official policy in place.
Of course, it’s also downright silly to believe that someone intent on doing harm to others is going to be dissuaded because of a sign warning them that possessing firearms beyond that point is not allowed.
That may be one reason why the Tennessean newspaper reports that the pastor is considering adding a security presence during services, but didn’t say anything about whether or not the church would declare itself a gun-free zone.
With fewer than 100 congregants, hiring armed security might be a financial reach, but don’t be surprised if church members themselves step up to serve as guardians if requested.

Observation O’ The Day
Mother Jones couldn’t even put one of their own “beloved” above their cause. He didn’t even use a gun in his suicide, but they stood on his still warm body to promote gun control.

Mother Jones Pushes Red Flag Laws After Gun Control Activist Kills Himself

Mother Jones pushed red flag laws after announcing that former executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety, Mark Glaze, killed himself.

The New York Times noted, “Glaze, who was widely considered a founding figure in the modern gun-control movement, died on Oct. 31 in Scranton, Pa.”

NYT went on to point out that Glaze’s death was a suicide.

A Facebook post from Glaze’s family members reads, in part:

As we celebrate the life of our beloved Mark, we would be remiss not to mention his harrowing struggle with alcohol, depression, and anxiety. In the last years of his life, Mark actively sought help. He completed several treatment programs, with the hope of finding peace and breaking free of the addictive cycle that caused him to feel so desperately alone and in pain. Mark took his own life while being held on DUI charges at the Lackawanna County Prison. While it may be difficult to discuss this specific cause of death, with suicide as the tenth leading cause of mortality in the United States– the numbers and instances are too frequent and increasing to ignore.

Mother Jones reported Glaze’s suicide, then pushed red flag laws

There is no indication that Mark used a gun to kill himself. Still, he was a victim of a scourge he worked to oppose. Nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths in the US are suicides, according to Mark’s former organization. To fight gun violence is to fight suicide. Research shows that people who have access to guns are far more likely to kill themselves than people who don’t.

Glaze and others in his field advocated for the enactment, in 19 states and DC, of so-called Red Flag laws, which allow local police to confiscate guns from people who have threatened to harm themselves or others. These orders aim to stop not just murder, but suicide. Evidence suggests they are most effective at preventing people from shooting themselves.

 

Data Disproves Left’s Fear Of Adhering To The Constitution On Guns
So many claims by gun control advocates like Justice Stephen Breyer are about things that might go wrong, but we don’t need to guess. The data shows gun carriers are responsible.

This year has seen the largest increase ever in the number of concealed handgun permit holders—more than two million, for a total of 21.52 million. That is a 48 percent increase since 2016. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of NYSRPA v. Bruen, which has a chance to further increase this total and make permitting rules more similar across states.

Six states now have more than 1 million permit holders: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the first state to have more than 2.5 million permits. Alabama has the highest rate of adults with permits, at 32.1 percent. Indiana is second, with 21.6 percent. By contrast, New Jersey and Hawaii both have rates of less than 0.1 percent.

The statistics don’t even account for the vast numbers of Americans who carry without permits. Twenty-one “constitutional carry” states no longer require people to have a permit to carry. Those who want to carry out of state may still get a permit, but many don’t bother.

Women and minorities (blacks and Asians) are driving the increase in permits. The growth in permits for women was 109 percent faster than for men, and 136 percent faster for blacks than for whites. As a result, women now make up 28.3 percent of permit holders, and black Americans make up 11 percent, close to their share of the population.

The lockdowns and related social unrest have something to do with this increase. As prisoners were released and police faced new restrictions and budgets cut, many people took responsibility for their own safety. But, last year, 20 states either stopped or virtually stopped issuing permits. After the process opened this year, applications were made in record numbers.

The current Supreme Court case has to do with the seven “may issue” states, which require applicants to provide “proper cause” with “good justification.” The court is considering replacing this discretionary process with objective rules. That way, someone can’t be denied a permit as long as she reaches a certain age, doesn’t have a criminal background, pays the fees, and completes any required training.

Chief Justice John Roberts and others expressed skepticism for requiring this. Roberts asked if you don’t have to justify what you are going to say “when you’re looking for a permit to speak on a street corner . . . why do you have to show in this case, convince somebody, that you’re entitled to exercise your Second Amendment right?”

After Brian Fletcher, the principal deputy solicitor general of the United States, said people had to prove a “demonstrated need” was consistent with the Second Amendment, Roberts responded: “I’m not sure that’s right. . . . regardless of what the [constitutional] right is, it would be surprising to have it depend upon a permit system.”

Only about 1 percent of adults in these may-issue states have permits. In the other 43 “Right-to-Carry” states, almost 11 percent of adults have permits.

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Media Hysteria over Efforts to Protect 2nd Amendment

CNN is on the warpath against politicians and gun rights activist organizations for defending the Second Amendment against efforts to erode the right to keep and bear arms, especially when remarks from Joe Biden are singled out.

In a lengthy report Friday, CNN focused on West Virginia Republican State Rep. Brandon Steele, who has been pushing a “Second Amendment Preservation Act” that would “bar state or local police from enforcing new federal gun restrictions the Biden administration might adopt.”

While the story notes Steele has acknowledged the Biden administration has been so far unsuccessful in pressing what was a sweeping gun control agenda unveiled early in 2020. It is an extremist package that includes a ban on so-called “assault rifles,” waiting periods on handgun purchases, so-called “universal background checks” and regulate semi-auto rifles the same as full-auto machine guns.

The story asserts gun rights groups and politicians have been “gunning up fears that Biden wants to… ‘erase the Second Amendment’ and come to people’s homes and take away their guns.”

CNN recalls a Fox News piece that talked about how Second Amendment groups hit the airwaves with a message that if Biden “can force a needle in your arm, he can take away your gun.” That message was sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation, an organization often overlooked by the establishment media, which is content with demonizing the National Rifle Association. NRA had nothing to do with the message.

CNN declared in its report, “The inflammatory rhetoric surrounding these new laws, critics says, is similar and even connected to claims of 2020 election fraud and pushback against Covid-19 vaccine or mask mandates in that they rely on a denial of reality.”

Perhaps it is CNN that is denying reality. The SAF messages broadcast earlier this fall included quotes from Biden during a CNN Townhall in which he admitted he has been working to prohibit not only semi-auto rifles, but 9mm pistols.

At the time the message ran on some 20 different cable networks, Alan Gottlieb, SAF founder and executive vice president, said in a statement, “Over the past eight months since taking office, Joe Biden has evolved from being an annoying gun control advocate to a dangerously ambitious gun prohibitionist. He hasn’t simply climbed on the gun ban train, he’s now the engineer, portraying so-called ‘gun violence’ as a public health epidemic. He’s perpetuating a myth invented by the gun ban lobby to demonize guns, their owners and the Second Amendment that protects their right to keep and bear arms.”

The CNN story quotes Alexandra Filindra, described as “a political science professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, who studies gun politics, disinformation and social media.” She intimates gun rights defenders as being “part of an ideological system, [and believe] that the other side — in this case, the Democrats — are devious and intent on taking political rights away and imposing a socialistic tyranny.”

The Second Amendment does not protect a “political right.” It protects a fundamental right enumerated in the Constitution, gun rights advocates would respond.

But after Tuesday’s devastating election results for Democrats, whose only bright light seems to be the victory of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy while a Republican truck driver operating on a shoestring budget just beat the leader of the state Senate Democrats, probably will put gun control on the back burner, if not the shelf. Virginia voters replaced Democrats with Republicans in all three statewide races including the governor’s race. In Minneapolis, voters soundly rejected an effort to defund and dismantle the police department. In Seattle, voters rejected candidates who had advocated to defund the police.

It just might be a forecast of things to come next November at the mid-term elections. The rush toward the far left by radical anti-gun Democrats just hit a speed bump, and people behind the efforts to protect the Second Amendment were partly, if not largely responsible.