Category: RKBA

Yeah, that ‘almost’. They’re still basically nonsensical.

Gun Control Group Almost Talks Actual Gun Sense

The phrase “gun sense” is generally nothing more than a euphemism for gun control. It’s a term that’s been corrupted from what it could have meant to be nothing more than a synonym for a term that has less and less popularity with the American public.

However, a gun-control group has decided to step away from talking about infringing on our Second Amendment rights for a moment to talk about something that almost equates to actual gun sense, more or less.

GunSense Vermont, a non-partisan group that works to keep Vermonters safe from gun violence, is looking to change the conversation around gun violence prevention by focusing on safe storage.

At a panel discussion on Thursday, the group focused their conversation on educating gun owners about their responsibility to safely secure guns in their homes to keep them out of the hands of kids, thieves, and anyone looking to cause harm.

Now, this is actually a non-controversial position we should all be able to rally behind.

Of course, the group also says some pretty ridiculous things, such as:

According to GunSense Vermont, a properly stored firearm is one that is unloaded, separate from the ammunition, and locked in a safe.

Meanwhile, one of the honchos (a deputy director) with the group also says that if you’re worried about needing your firearm in a hurry, you should get a quick-access safe.

Which, of course, would require one not to have the weapon “properly” stored.

Then there’s the very real concern of not being able to access the weapon from the quick-access safe because of a loss of fine motor control during a particularly stressful event. Trust me, trying to grab a gun in the middle of the night can be hard enough if it’s in a nightstand drawer. Accessing a combination safe in the mere seconds provided may well be impossible for some.

Yet I don’t want to be too hard on GunSense Vermont.

While they’re a gun control group, they’re actually trying to reach out and talk about non-legislative solutions to firearm-related violence. This shouldn’t be mocked or dismissed, but encouraged. This is something I’m willing to sit down with them and discuss things like this.

You really can’t claim you’re not about banning guns and then not at least try to find non-legislative ways to reduce deaths by firearms. Many of us agree that weapons should be stored safely away from children and thieves. That’s some common ground we can build from. Who knows, maybe we can build from that and find all kinds of other ways to address violent crime without infringing on gun rights.

Either way, this is a good thing.

However, this shouldn’t be taken as me being remotely open to any of their anti-gun proposals. I’m not and I won’t be. See, I think much of our problems with violent crime and other firearm-related deaths can be solved without infringing on the right to keep and bear arms in the least.

My hope is that GunSense Vermont is starting to see things that way as well. I’m not holding my breath, but a guy can dream, can’t he?

Just to point out the intellectual level of some people who believe they’re making a salient point about a subject that anyone can easily determine they are totally clueless about

Letter: What does any of this have to do with the Second Amendment?
Portsmouth Herald

June 10 – To the Editor:

In the news the past month or so:

A 57-year old retired NYC police officer is shot accidentally by a friend trying to break up a dispute outside a pizza parlor.

A 6-year old boy, a passenger in his mother’s car, is shot in a road rage incident.

Another young boy, retrieving his bike from the sidewalk near his home, is shot by a neighbor.

Several dozen are killed or wounded over a weekend in gang-related shootouts in Chicago.

An 18-year old from Ohio is found carrying an AK-47 in a NYC subway.

A woman in Texas shoots a beauty shop owner in a dispute about the cost of her pedicure.

A 5-year old boy is accidentally shot by his mother who was aiming at a dog.

Eight people are killed in Atlanta, followed by shootings in a supermarket in Colorado, an office building in California, a FedEx office in Indianapolis, a rail yard in San Jose. A total of 39 people.

Somebody….anybody….Please! Can anyone tell me what any of this has to do with the Second Amendment?

Anthony McManus

Dover

It’s not just how, but also when, and if you really can that’s important.

There Is Far More to Concealed Carry Than Just Buying a Handgun
You need the proper training and mindset before you decide to concealed-carry a handgun. Here’s what you need to know

There is a lot more to carrying a concealed firearm for self-defense than snapping a holster on your waistband and walking out the door. It’s a serious commitment that will impact pretty much everything someone does outside their home, from the clothes a person wears and how they wear them, to the way they get into a car and buckle a seatbelt, to the exact mechanics of picking something up off the floor—or at least, it should.

If you conceal carry, that means you carry a gun as much as possible to protect yourself and loved ones. It means having a self-defense mindset and having that defensive firearm at the ready. Today, there are a lot of people in the U.S. who may have the necessary physical tools for self-defense, but not the skills or the mindset, which is far more important than which handgun, caliber, or holster someone chooses.

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Three weeks until Tennesseans can carry without a permit

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) – In three weeks, permit less carry goes into effect in Tennessee.

And is it impacting gun sales? The folks at Royal Range in Nashville say they’re not seeing much of an impact on sales due to the Permitless carry law. But, the gun range store says recently they’ve seen a new trend with women.

“So far not a giant impact,” Bob Allen, the Director of Training at Royal Range said. “We’re kind of steady, maybe just a little bit above right now. And really about the same with ammo,” Allen said.

Gun Owner Jarrett Williams said the Permitless carry law will make him buy more guns but not for obvious reasons.

“Yes it will but only because I know there are going to be more people who maybe shouldn’t have guns,” Williams said. ‘I’m going to possibly need something to defend myself against anybody who is less qualified to have a weapon on them,” he added.

Allen at Royal Range said some people are buying up; basically hoarding lots of ammo because they don’t know what the future holds.

“Ammo prices have gone up substantially, but they’ve dropped a bit,” Allen said. “Thousand rounds of 9mm ammo was about $240 before Covid and during Covid it got to $800 and people were still buying it it has since dropped here at our place to $500 for a thousand rounds. And its kind of hard to get nowadays,” he added.

Allen who oversees training at Royal Range says he has seen one major trend; more women buying guns.

‘We’ve seen a lot of; a substantial increase in ladies coming here to buy guns,” Allen said. “We are seeing that increase quite a bit, whether its women self-defense , first time gun owners,” he added.

Allen adds that even though the law takes effect in July, it doesn’t require in- person or online course anymore. Royal Range is putting a course in place to teach people the law when the permitless carry goes into effect.

“We’re all for a person defending themselves. They need to know the law, because if you don’t know the law, you will get in so much trouble. If I pull it out at the wrong time, that’s called aggravated assault which is felony,” Allen said.

He also adds another trend they’ve noticed recently is more people coming to the gun range looking for training.

Likely voters back right to carry concealed guns, 2-1

In a slap at President Joe Biden’s new effort to impose gun control and tax and regulate one of the nation’s most popular (and concealable) firearms, people overwhelmingly have endorsed expanding the Second Amendment to include carrying concealed weapons.

In a new Zogby Poll provided to Secrets Thursday just minutes before the administration released its rule to target AR-rifle-style pistols, likely voters by a 63%-29% margin endorsed the idea.

consealedcarry060721.png

In his analysis, pollster Jonathan Zogby said that most voters “agreed that the Second Amendment to the Constitution should also encompass the right to carry a concealed gun. A majority of voters supported concealed carry as a part of the Second Amendment in all regions.”

The poll, one of a series he released through Secrets this week, is the first to find support for concealed carry laws to be added to the Second Amendment.

And it comes as the Supreme Court is considering a New York ban on concealed carry and Biden is eyeing new gun control laws, including taxing and registering millions of legally purchased AR-rifle-style pistols.

Concealed carry has become a hot-button issue as some liberal states move to limit the issuance of permits, though a majority do. And in Washington, there are several efforts in the House and the Senate to approve national “reciprocity” for permit-holders to travel between states with their concealed weapons.

The survey is likely to be seized upon by the authors of the legislation.

It also confirmed a trend seen in gun stores of many more buyers, including women, black people, and minorities, getting handguns to protect themselves as crime increases.

SECOND AMENDMENT PRESERVATION ACT TO BECOME LAW SATURDAY, WITH MISSOURI GOVERNOR’S SIGNATURE

Legislation establishing a Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) will be signed into law Saturday afternoon by Missouri’s governor, in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit. Governor Mike Parson (R) will sign SAPA Saturday at 2 at Frontier Justice.

State Rep. Jered Taylor (R-Nixa) speaks on the Missouri House floor in Jefferson City on May 11, 2021, as Rep. Don Rone (R-Portageville) looks on (file photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at House Communications)

House Bill 85 is sponsored by State Rep. Jered Taylor (R-Nixa) and State Sen. Eric Burlison (R-Battlefield). They say it’s about protecting Missourians and gun rights. Critics like former State Rep. Chris Kelly (D-Columbia) say the bill is unconstitutional.

HB 85 declares that it’s the duty of the courts and law enforcement agencies to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. It also declares as invalid all federal laws that infringe on the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

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I wouldn’t necessarily call criminal being criminals as a ‘failure’ of gun control. This just confirms that these laws aren’t for controlling guns, but controlling the average law abiding citizen.

Gun Control Failures Don’t Mean You Need More Gun Control

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then there’s no doubt about how insane gun control really is.

Over and over again, proponents of it continue to take everything as an excuse that more gun control is needed. Study says that gun control reduced crime? Then it’s proof we need more gun control. Study shows gun control doesn’t work? Then clearly the problem is that we need more gun control.

It’s not any better when you have a total failure of gun control happen in real life, either.

A month after Gov. J.B. Pritzker took office in 2019, giving Democrats complete control in Springfield, flaws in Illinois’ gun laws were exposed when a convicted felon whose state firearm owner’s identification card had been revoked opened fire in an Aurora warehouse, killing five co-workers and wounding a sixth along with five police officers.

The case became a rallying point for gun safety advocates, who’ve pushed for mandatory fingerprinting for FOID card applications, universal background checks for gun buyers, and a system that ensures people whose FOID cards are revoked hand over their weapons to authorities.

More than two years later, however, Pritzker and the Democratic-controlled legislature haven’t enacted those policies or any other major gun safety measures, even as they successfully pushed progressive measures that range from legalizing marijuana to abolishing cash bail.

“These are complicated issues,” Pritzker said of gun control last week in an interview with the Chicago Tribune.

“We have Democrats from downstate, from areas where people are deeply concerned about protecting their gun rights,” he said. “And then we’ve got people who live in other parts of the state who believe, as I do, that we need to have a greater focus on gun safety, but it’s a complicated challenge in order to get enough votes put together.”

And all of that ignores the simple fact that while the Aurora shooter was a convicted felon, he went through every hoop the state of Illinois cared to present. He got a FOID. He filled out the ATF’s Form 4473. He didn’t lie about any of his personal information–though he did lie about being a convicted felon, to be clear, but not his name, address, or other such data–and still was able to buy a gun.

Gun control failed at every single level.

That’s kind of like what happens every single day in Chicago. There, despite all the gun control laws on the books in Illinois, criminals are able to obtain firearms easily enough. Meanwhile, citizens trying to obey the law are dealing with a screwed-up system.

At what point do people look at these failures and recognize that doubling down on a failed strategy isn’t going to make anyone’s life any better? The gun control we see day in and day out in Illinois doesn’t work, and yet people are asking why isn’t there more of the very thing that has been amply illustrated to not accomplish a blasted thing.

Honestly, it makes no sense to me. It just doesn’t.

What a strategy fails to work, a reasonable person would try something new. In Illinois and far too many other states, they’re enamored with the idea of gun control that they can’t admit that it just isn’t working.

These states are like that friend in a toxic relationship who is convinced that they just need to do one more thing to make the relationship work. We all know how those kinds of things work out, don’t we?

Illinois isn’t likely to turn out the least bit better, either.

 

 

Letter To The Editor O’ The Day

As civil unrest grows, guns are essential for protection

Missing the mark

To Jimmy Dorrell: Your thesis that Christians (so-called) often use the Bible and twist scripture to justify their own selfish desires is certainly true, but Texas’ constitutional carry law is not an example of this practice [May 30 op-ed]. Actual examples could include the church’s gradual acceptance of homosexuality, defense of abortion or justification of adultery, rampant divorce, cohabitation and fornication. You chose this more politically correct topic as your hard line on Biblical malpractice but I look forward to your subsequent pieces on the rest of the issues listed above. Regardless, your piece was a mischaracterization of the argument, and the events that you cited from scripture were in no way related to the conversation of self-defense or willfully twisting the Bible for our own selfish desires.

First, you take umbrage with the politicians referring to our “God-given right” to self-defense, but this is a straw man. Nobody be is referencing scripture, but rather they’re employing a turn of phrase that has been used for centuries in America. As an example, you have (and freely exercise) your God-given right to free speech, and assuming that you also use this idiom, no one challenges you, asking where it says in the Bible that you can speak freely. This is because no one believes that you’re actually referencing Scripture when you use this phrase, and you don’t believe that these politicians are referencing Scripture, either. It simply affords you an opportunity to discuss the real issue — guns.

Second, you assert that Jesus’ own disciples twisted his words for their misguided desires but then you cite three seemingly random instances that have nothing to do with your premise. When James and John were arguing about who would be greatest, they were simply arguing what they wanted, not twisting anything they had heard from Jesus. Judas betrayed Jesus, but nothing more — he didn’t do so out of some misinterpretation of Jesus’ words. And Peter attacked an officer that was simply trying to arrest his teacher. There was no twisting of words, only Peter acting independently, out of anger and fear. Jesus even rebukes Peter, asking him, “Am I leading a rebellion?” He was not, and neither are your fellow constitutional carry countrymen.

Third, your arguments lack an understanding in the difference between vengeance, which is the Lord’s, and the protection of yourself and others, which is your responsibility as a man of God. A constitutional carry law simply ensures that everyone has the capacity to protect themselves against those that would do them harm.

“For greater love hath no man than this, that he would lay down his life for a friend” — John 15:3.

We need to be prepared to protect those around us, stranger or family, and we need to be willing to die for them. But throwing yourself in front of a bullet doesn’t mean much when there are 30 more behind the one that put you on the floor. You seem to be dismissive of the growing threats in this country, but as our collective conscience wanes and civil unrest grows, violence, whether perpetrated by a lone, mad gunman or a crazed mob, becomes more and more likely. Those of us who enjoy the right to constitutionally carry will peacefully stand by, and on the day when the forces of hell come crashing down, I hope that I’m nearby so that I might have the chance to protect the people that were put in your care.

Jarek Matthew, Waco

The Expansion of Constitutional Carry

Bureaucrats Bureaucraps were never supposed to be in a position to make us ask—even to beg—for our constitutionally protected rights, as they can in jurisdictions with “may-issue” carry permit laws.

Thanks in no small part to lobbying from the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, and to the many NRA members who stand behind the NRA by contacting their representatives, 20 states have now gotten bureaucrats out of the way by passing some type of “constitutional carry” (or “permitless carry”) legislation; in fact, four of these 20 states were added this year—Iowa, Montana, Tennessee and Utah.

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Antigun Advocacy Group Tries To Rewrite Current History Of Gun Buyers

It’s widely established that law-abiding Americans are buying firearms at record levels. No one disputes it. Gun control groups decry the trend. Supporters of the Second Amendment celebrate it. But during the past 18 months, the fact is a historic number of Americans have taken ownership of their self-defense and that includes millions of first-time buyers who bought a gun.

Leave it to staunch gun control advocate and billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s agitprop bullhorn The Trace to “report” on a new “survey” severely downplaying what’s happening.

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Comment O’ The Day:
“I could be down for this. Maybe it would keep those afraid of any firearm from moving away from the coasts.”

BLUF:
Virginia is concerned about a “bad” America.
The one to which she refers — one in which houses host guns — was previously known to both Republicans and Democrats as just “America.”

LA Times Writer Wants Gun Ownership Reported on Real Estate Listings, but for the Opposite Reason as You

When you’re considering moving to a new area, what are the pluses that matter most? Low crime? Good schools? Trash pickup?

A writer for The Los Angeles Times has another metric that may be worth consideration.

On Tuesday, opinion columnist Virginia Heffernan took to Twitter with an idea:

“Real-estate listings should include prevalence of gun-ownership in a 50-mile radius…”

She’d also like info on the “number of annual mass shootings in the region.”

“Time to change what a ‘bad neighborhood’ is,” she announced.

What if someone owns a modern sporting rifle, also known as the best-selling hunting rifle in America?

She believes that’d constitute a bad place for children:

“[A]nd introduce a meaningful tax on guns and gun violence. No one should say, ‘This is a great place to raise kids’ about neighborhoods where even one person has an assault rifle.”

Stop all the racializing:

“The metric would be simple. Example: Staten Island (pop 474k) has 4x the gun ownership per capita of the Bronx (pop 1.4m). If that reads as safer or more [free] to some people, Staten Island is for them. If not, maybe time for the Bronx. Take race, class, politics out of the real-estate equation.”

 

There’d definitely be a lot of items to track.

In 2018, Switzerland’s Small Arms Survey reported there were nearly 400,000,000 guns in the United States.

That was, obviously, two years before 2020’s gun-buying surge.

As for “assault rifles,” the AR-15’s certainly been vilified courtesy of impressive, dedicated effort by some on the Left side of the aisle.

Meanwhile, of course, ownership of any firearm doesn’t equal impending murder, and the lightweight modern rifle isn’t employed in most gun crimes.

The vast majority of such are, as you know, committed with handguns.

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Changing Times.. and the Victims of Gun Control

We assume that tomorrow will be much like today. That is how we plan our lives and our politics. If we stop to think about it, we remember that the world surprises us all the time. We ignore that bad things happen because they happen so infrequently. Needing a fire extinguisher seems so unlikely.. until we smell smoke. This week, history reminded us how governments have hurt us. Consider these events and ask if the police were there to protect honest citizens, or would these citizens have been better off if they could defend themselves?

-Almost a hundred years ago to the day, thousands of black citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma had to depend on the police for protection while they were attacked and their homes, their shops, and their businesses were burned to the ground by white mobs. None of these honest black citizens saw the need for armed defense.. the day before they needed it so desperately.

-Violence happens around the world. It was 32 years ago when over ten thousand unarmed students and teachers were murdered by Chinese politicians and the Chinese military in Tiananmen Square. The bodies were deliberately pulverized by tanks, scooped up by bulldozers, and then dumped to hide the number of protesters who were murdered. China has strict gun control.. for civilians.

armed Korean shopkeepers during the Los Angeles riots

-It was only 29 years ago when Korean shop owners in Los Angeles tried to stop black mobs from looting and burning their homes and businesses. 25 years earlier, the shop owners had been barred under California law from carrying handguns in public. Fortunately, a few of them were armed with rifles. Today, those are the same rifles that California politicians want to ban.

-It was six years ago when several dozen students at a teacher’s college were murdered by local government officials and drug gangs in Mexico. Mexico has strict gun control laws. Honest citizens are disarmed.

-It was only a few months ago when thousands of protestors in Hong Kong were arrested and forced onto trains going to reeducation and slave labor camps. Chinese officials say the citizens of Hong Kong are disarmed for their own protection.

Our memory plays tricks on us. Bad things happen every day, but we assume those surprising events will simply happen to someone else and not to us.  For most of us, our peace is interrupted by only occasional violence. We forget our unusual perspective where peace is the rule.

Our bias makes it easy to believe the politician as he sits in his air-conditioned office and slowly explains that we have no need for armed defense. That same claim is less believable when the official shouts in front of a burning building during a riot.

The police chief sounds so reasonable when he tells us to be a good witness and simply call the police. That same claim is incredible if the cop is in riot gear at a violent protest. As an unwilling participant in a number of recent natural disasters, I can attest that unexpected events can happen to anyone. In practice, the police show up later.. if at all.

We expect governments to talk to us. Sometimes it is easier for politicians and mobs to murder us. This year, we’ve had politicians in the US say we should burn down our cities and start over. Socialist elites have said their political opponents aren’t really people and need to be forcibly re-educated. While shocking and deplorable, this talk is mostly peaceful.. so far. Armed citizens keep the dialogue going because violence against armed citizens is so costly. Armed citizens deter both criminals and immoral politicians who would use violence to achieve their political ends.

I hope for peace: that’s why I am armed. Unfortunately, tens of  millions of honest and hard working citizens in the United States are disarmed by their government. I fear for them, and for the rest of us if they are attacked.

Tomorrow will be pretty much like today and the day before, but not always in the way we expect.

Corrections to the FBI’s Reports on Active Shooting Incidents
(opens the PDF in a browser)
John R. Lott

The claim in the original FBI report that active shooting cases have increased over time was a result of data errors, both in terms of how the cases were collected and the missing of many attacks. Some of the cases that the original reports missed involved as many as four to nine people being murdered.

For the period from 2014 to 2019, the FBI had missed additional cases. Once those cases are included there were 25 cases out of 162 (15.4%) where people with permitted concealed handguns stopped the attacks. The FBI reports keep excluding cases where shootings attacks have been stopped by concealed handgun permit holders. To put it differently, while 36% of active shooting attacks have occurred in places where guns are allowed, almost half (42.3%) of those were stopped by people legally carry concealed handguns.

In light of these errors, media, courts, law enforcement, and policymakers, are advised to rely on the updated, corrected data provided in this report.

The federal goobermint desperately wants some new gun control law passed.  They’re doing everything they can to get something, anything and the only thing that is stopping them – right now – is the Senate filibuster.
However, any new law will only matter if someone enforces it, and for the most part, it’s been local LE doing the lion’s share of it since there really isn’t enough fed LE to do the job. Thusly…………..

Utah sheriff’s department enacts policy defending gun rights

ARMINGTON, Utah (AP) — Davis County sheriff’s deputies and other department employees are prohibited under a new office policy from enforcing certain measures that could infringe on the right to bear arms.

The Standard-Examiner reported Sheriff Kelly Sparks says the policy is meant as a preventive measure and counterweight to any possible governmental action to interfere with gun rights in the county.

The policy took effect Tuesday, the same day county commissioners expressed support for the move.

Sparks says no specific measure or event prompted the change, and that the move is more “actionable” than declaring Second Amendment sanctuary status.

Historian Falsely Claims The Second Amendment Was Created To Protect Slavery
The goal isn’t merely to just falsify our history, but to do so in a way that breeds further division within the country.

After spending decades assailing the Second Amendment rights of American citizens, cultural Marxists believe they’ve finally found the perfect line of attack against the constitutional right to keep and bear arms: racism.

Just like every other aspect of the American Founding, the ratification of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is rooted in nothing more than white supremacy. Or at least, that’s what scholar Carol Anderson wants you to believe.

In her latest book, “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” Anderson argues that the “well regulated Militia” inscribed in the Second Amendment was created to provide states with a mechanism to quell potential slave uprisings.

“It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising,” she told NPR. “And … James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias — and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts.”

Anderson claimed the Second Amendment “provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed, that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings.”

While Anderson argues that her book isn’t “anti-gun,” her statements made to CNN say otherwise. When asked about the recent announcement that the Supreme Court would pick up a gun rights case, Anderson pivoted to gun control, asserting that opposition to such measures is likely based on white Americans’ fear of black Americans.

“After Sandy Hook, nothing happened,” she said. “How could that be? That could be because of this underlying fear that if there are real gun safety laws then whites will be left defenseless against these black people.”

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NY Dems’ Jim Crow Proposals: A New Literacy Test, Poll Tax & Registry

If there’s anything you can expect from New York Democrats with certainty, it is their iterative throttling of the Bill of Rights. Whether it’s Governor Andrew Cuomo or Attorney General Fash (Tish) James, they all want the citizenry disarmed and muzzled, police defunded, and violent criminals released among the public. And if you thought that they can’t possibly do any more damage than what they already did with the NY SAFE Act, you’re absolutely wrong.

This Tuesday, NY Democrats held a news conference calling for more gun control. They have proposed several pieces of legislation that will embolden criminals while harassing ordinary people.

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Louisiana: Legislature Passes Constitutional Carry Legislation, Sending it to Governor’s Desk

[Tuesday], the Louisiana Legislature gave final approval to Constitutional Carry Legislation, Senate Bill 118. This important self-defense measure now heads to the desk of Governor John Bel Edwards for his signature. Please contact Governor Edwards and ask him to sign Senate Bill 118 into law.

Senate Bill 118 removes the requirement for law-abiding individuals to obtain a concealed handgun permit before being allowed to carry concealed, a handgun for self-defense. This important legislation ensures that citizens are able to exercise their right to self-defense without government red tape or delays. This measure does not affect previously issued carry permits, and allows citizens who still wish to obtain a permit in order to carry in other states recognizing Louisiana permits, to do so.

The legislature also passed pro-gun legislation, House Bill 124, yesterday. This measure will follow SB 118 to Governor Edwards’ desk for his signature.

House Bill 124 clarifies Louisiana’s concealed carry laws that cause individuals with a concealed carry permit to possibly be arrested for carrying a knife, while also lawfully carrying a firearm for self-defense. This is not the intent of the law, and HB 124 clears this up.

 

Yes, Gun Control Did Help Facilitate The Holocaust

The Holocaust is one of the most horrible events in human history. It became the benchmark by which we compare atrocities, and for good reason. Millions of Jews slaughtered. Millions more put through some of the worst abuses a person can visit upon another. It was awful in so many ways.

However, we on the gun right side have pointed out over and over again that if the Jews had been able to have guns, the Holocaust may never have happened.

Unsurprisingly, some people disagree.

But the freshman congresswoman is hardly the only figure in the nation to have manipulated the Holocaust. The National Rifle Association, or at least its modern leaders led by its now embattled CEO, Wayne LaPierre, have long searched for “proof” that gun control is nothing more than a slippery slope to genocide. And in recent years, the NRA has manipulated the Holocaust to claim they finally found it, funding research that has allegedly discovered a new link between gun control and the Holocaust that generations of scholars have yet to find.

In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League said “Nazi Analogies Have No Place In Gun Control Debate” after a half dozen commentators including Sean Hannity and Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News out of the blue all raised the matter of gun control and the Holocaust.

“If the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had had the firepower and the ammunition that the Nazis did, some of Poland might have stayed free and more persons would have survived the Holocaust,” claimed Napolitano.

It’s as if they were all laying the groundwork for the book, “Gun Control in The Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘Enemies of the State,’” published later that year by the Independent Institute, a small think-tank in Oakland. Research for this book was partly funded by the NRA. Its author, Stephen P. Halbrook, is the nation’s best-known pro-gun lawyer. Several years before, during the watershed gun rights case Heller vs. District of Columbia that established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep arms, Halbrook filed a successful amicus brief on behalf of 250 members of the House of Representatives, 55 senators, and the president of the Senate, then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Halbrook’s thesis about gun control and the Holocaust is novel at best. Most Holocaust scholars, like Alan E. Steinweis, director of holocaust studies at the University of Vermont, say that the idea that gun control was a factor in the Holocaust is “simply a nonissue.” But Halbrook claims that prior gun control laws during the Weimer Republic, or Germany’s democratic years before Hitler took power, were used to seize firearms from Jews, enough to have helped enable the Holocaust.

Never mind the weak evidence, the NRA’s house organ crowed about the book’s supposed breakthrough.

The problem with this line of “reasoning” is that they’re demanding pro-gun voices provide proof for something that wasn’t allowed to happen.

Did the Weimar Republic ban guns? Yes.

Were the Jews in Nazi Germany armed? No.

As such, were they able to offer armed resistance when herded into concentration camps? Also, no.

No one is saying that the Weimar Republic actively sought to empower those that followed them to commit genocide against the Jewish people. No one is claiming that things proceeded along a set plan all built around the idea of exterminating not just the Jews but also homosexuals and gypsies.

To make that claim, you’d need a great deal of evidence and that evidence likely doesn’t exist.

However, there’s ample reason to suggest that the Nazis could capitalize on the existing laws and take advantage of a disarmed population. In fact, no one disputes the fact they were disarmed and while some claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, I don’t really care about their opinions on much of anything.

Now, let’s also be clear that we can’t be certain that an armed population would have prevented the Holocaust. Even in the modern United States where guns outnumber people, a lot of folks are unarmed by choice. That would likely have been true right up until the Nazis decided to put the Jews in concentration camps. How many would have been able to fight back?

Frankly, we’ll never know.

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Op-Ed Points Out Disconnect Between Anti-Gun Beliefs And Actions

Anti-gun groups are having a ball these days. Not only does their preferred party control the House, the Senate, and the White House, but a surge in violent crime is making people very, very nervous. The fact that there’s also been a gun-buying surge has only made them giddier.

However, a recent op-ed over at the New York Daily News about the surge in violence brought up an interesting point.

The recent spike in gun violence has brought New York City to a genuine inflection point in criminal justice policy. It’s not yet an existential crisis. While the statistics are bad, they do not point to an all-out loss of control of our streets like the 1980s and early ’90s. But the decisions made by policymakers and voters over the next weeks will determine whether we risk losing control again.

Despite claims to the contrary out of City Hall, the social anxiety of the pandemic is not primarily responsible for the rise in gun violence. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers faced desperate economic hardship and unprecedented disruption. Very few of them shot their neighbor or robbed a bodega at gunpoint. For every young man who has chosen to engage in gun violence, thousands of his peers are looking for work and going to school.

Gun violence is not about poverty. Poor people are not criminals. This current wave of violence is about score-settling. It’s about criminal actors taking advantage of fewer witnesses on the street and the concealing of identities behind masks. It’s about removing the disincentives to criminal behavior, including pretrial detention for violent crime. It’s about the ill-conceived reduction of the NYPD’s gun suppression capabilities with the elimination of anti-crime teams.

Progressive reformers and law enforcement officials agree on almost nothing, except that a very small number of offenders commit the vast majority of crime. Identify and contain these offenders, and crime drops. They also agree that gun crime spreads as quickly as COVID. Each shooting carries the near-certain risk of retaliation. If not contained, this contagion spreads throughout entire neighborhoods, disproportionately impacting communities of color. At-risk groups of young men are uniquely susceptible to the luring excitement of gang life. Call them gangs or crews, they travel together to adjacent neighborhoods or housing developments, shoot at other young men, and flee home. The rival group then retaliates. In some neighborhoods, this back-and-forth continues for generations.

Note the bolded line.

It’s interesting to me that progressive reformers and law enforcement officials can agree on almost nothing except that the number of actual offenders is small. It’s interesting because another thing they agree on, at least in large urban centers, is that gun control is needed.

In other words, the anti-gun jihadists know that the total number of bad actors is minute, yet they still want to enact restrictions on the population as a whole because of the acts of a small handful of people. They know this is the case. They know that law-abiding citizens are law-abiding. They know that the vast majority are law-abiding.

And still, these anti-gun zealots want to infringe on our rights.

Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me, but it does infuriate me. It would be different if they believed there were more criminals than there actually are. That’s not the case, though.

They know it’s not all of us. They know it’s just a tiny handful and I suspect they also know they get their guns through illicit means. They know all of this and still they push their anti-gun agenda.

They know. They just don’t care.