Category: RKBA

O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A     Oklahoma!!!!     O. K. !

Steagall Wins Passage of Nation’s First Anti-Red Flag Bill

OKLAHOMA CITY – State Rep. Jay Steagall, R-Yukon, on Friday won passage of the nation’s first anti-red flag bill in the Oklahoma House of Representatives with a vote of 77-14.

Senate Bill 1081, The Anti-Red Flag Act, authored in the state Senate by Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, formerly won passage in that chamber with a vote of 34-9. It now moves to the governor for his consideration to be signed into law.

“This bill would stop any action from the federal government or even from local or state authorities that would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of our citizens,” Steagall said.

Steagall said the measure is necessary as a growing number of states have adopted such laws and federal legislative proposals have offered grants to compel states, counties or municipalities to enact policies that would allow a court or other entity to confiscate firearms or restrict gun access to otherwise law-abiding citizens deemed to be an imminent danger.

“People already endure background checks, age regulations and other measures that serve as a check on whether they are deemed eligible to own or operate a firearm,” Steagall said. “Giving the government even more power over this decision is a flagrant violation of several rights guaranteed us under the United States Constitution. I find it impossible for any red-flag law to respect due process or the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I have taken the oath to protect our Constitution seven times throughout my 22 years of service and nine deployments in the military, an oath that I take very seriously. I will not stand idly by and let this freedom be stripped from us.”

Meet the gun safety instructor holding ‘office hours’ on Zoom
Gun rights advocates are promoting safety training in response to record-breaking numbers of arms sales amid Covid-19

On a recent afternoon in San Jose, California, Chuck Rossi held up his AR-15 in front of his computer camera, talking through how to hold the weapon safely, and how to load it with ammunition.

“AR-15s are modular. They’re like Legos for men,” Rossi said. The man on the other side of the Zoom call chuckled.

Rossi is an activist turned safety instructor, one of the many gun owners across the country who are using Zoom or social media to teach new gun owners how to use their weapons.

The coronavirus pandemic has driven record-breaking numbers of gun sales in the United States, as gun sellers have succeeded in being categorized as “essential businesses”. At least anecdotally, many of the millions of guns sold during the pandemic have gone to first-time gun buyers, sparking concerns about potential increases in domestic violence, gun accidents and child gun deaths. Gun control advocates say the panic-buying during a time of anxiety, uncertainty and economic distress has also made gun suicide a particular concern.

In response, gun rights advocates have focused on safety training, with some offering free sessions to make sure new gun owners understand how to operate their weapons – and feel welcomed to the gun community.

Rossi was an early Facebook employee who left the company in 2018, and still lives in San Jose. He co-founded Open Source Defense, a Silicon Valley gun rights group. The group’s founders live across the country, but many of them are current or former tech workers. Between 20% and 30% of Americans say they personally own a gun, a number that has fallen for decades, and the group aims to grow the base of American gun owners by being friendly, digitally savvy and “zero percent” focused on culture wars. Zoom “office hours” for new owners is one of their initiatives.

When he signed up for a Zoom gun safety session, one new gun owner, a 40-year-old tech company worker from San Jose, said he expected he would be chatting with “some hillbilly NRA guy”.

“Is he even going to be nice to me?” the tech worker, who is black, wondered. Instead he got Rossi, who works in the same industry and lives in the same town. Just a few years ago, the new gun owner, who asked that his name not be used, said he was someone who had believed that AR-15s should be banned.

In early March, as concerns about coronavirus grew, his company told employees not to worry, that “the government has it under control, there’s going to be a vaccine.” Then he went to grocery store, “and there was nothing” so he had to go to his parent’s house to get toilet paper.

He starting thinking about stories of civil unrest during the Los Angeles riots or Hurricane Katrina and said he worried about desperate people, hungry people, who might see homes in his nice San Jose neighborhood as soft targets.

“People take from those who have,” he said. How likely was it that he would ever be a target? “One in a million,” he said. “I consider it an extreme impossibility. But why not be prepared?” In mid-March he went to buy self-defense weapons: a handgun and, because shotguns were sold out, an AR-15, which retails for about $1,000.

The new gun owner’s parents were appalled, and worried about the safety of his young children, ages three and one. His mother tried to get his brother to intervene. Instead, his brother bought himself three guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

The new gun buyer said the Zoom session was part of his attempt to be responsible. Rossi, hefting his own high-end AR-15, recapped the principles of gun safety: always keep the weapon’s muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Be aware of what might be behind the target you’re shooting at. Treat every gun as if it’s loaded.

They did some troubleshooting: what should he do if an ammunition round got jammed inside his gun? How long would his military-surplus ammo be usable? Ammo didn’t go bad, Rossi said. He was still “shooting rounds” from the second world war and “surplus from the Korean war”.

While “white Americans tend to be more vocal about their gun ownership”, the new owner said, being a black gun owner didn’t feel special. But it came with different concerns. He was more afraid a police officer might shoot him than that someone else might attack him on the street; he would “never” carry a gun in public.

If he ever had to call the police to his home, he said, he would emphasize: “The black guy with the gun is the homeowner.” Owning guns had already shifted some of his political opinions. He said he still supported limits on larger-capacity ammunition magazines. But when he bought his guns, he said, he had to wait 10 days to get them. “That was an eternity to me,” he said. “Are these really common sense gun laws?”

Rossi was encouraged to hear this, and said he’d try to persuade the new gun owner about why he actually needed larger-capacity magazines next. The two men made a plan to go shooting in person as soon as possible.

The Truth About 3-D Printed Guns and Criminal Gun Usage

Gun control activists have found a new target to go after: 3-D printed guns.

Why? It’s an easy scapegoat to lay blame on, just like every proposed gun control policy mulled before Congress and state legislatures.

This effort is attributed to two things: the reintroduction of Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) “Untraceable Firearms Act,” and a recent ‘60 Minutes’ CBS report claiming criminals overwhelmingly prefer them when committing crimes. The former, if passed, would ban the manufacture and sale of “ghost guns.”

Giffords, a gun control organization operated by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), just launched a campaign against these firearms. Unsurprisingly, the organization and its senior policy advisor, David Chipman, are spreading misinformation about them.

In a recent blog post titled Ghost Guns Are Specifically Designed for Criminals, the retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) special agent claimed, “These days, we’re seeing an alarming new trend among criminals and firearm traffickers: ghost guns. Not enough people are talking about this growing threat, and that’s got to change.”

He added,“Why do criminals love ghost guns? That’s a no-brainer. It makes their jobs easier.”

Congressional Democrats, Giffords, and ‘60 Minutes’ are intentionally deceiving the public about 3-D guns. Let’s explore the facts about them and their alleged primary use in gun crimes.

No Evidence 3-D Guns Predominantly Used in Crime

While “ghost guns” were recently trafficked and used in last year’s Saugus school shooting, there’s no evidence suggesting they’re a criminal’s to-go gun.

For example, a January 2019 survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found criminals didn’t readily use “ghost guns” in perpetrated crimes. The survey, Source And Use Of Firearms Involved In Crimes: Survey Of Prison Inmates, 2016, concluded of the 287,400 prisoners surveyed who possessed guns during their offense 56 percent had stolen them, 6 percent had found the firearms at the scene of the crime, 43 percent obtained it from the black market or illegal means while 25 percent were gifted the guns by family members or friends. A mere 7 percent of respondents surveyed had purchased guns from federal firearms license dealers (FFL).

According to a 2016 Chicago Inmate Survey of Gun Access and Use (CIS) from University of Chicago Crime Lab, Windy City criminals primarily obtained firearms from strangers (34.4%), theft (31.7%), friends/family (26.7%), gangs (22.6%), straw purchases (20.8%), and on the street (19.7%).

Even the ATF officer featured in the ‘60 Minutes’ special, Thomas Chittum, couldn’t say the number of “ghost guns” used in crimes. In fact, he admitted they constitute a minority of guns involved:

Bill Whitaker:  How many of these guns are on the streets, you have no idea?

Thomas Chittum: Uh, no, I have no idea.

Bill Whitaker: And how many crimes are being committed by these guns, you have no idea?

Thomas Chittum: Well, not with precision. They still represent a minority of the firearms that are being used in crimes. But we do see that they’re increasing significantly and rapidly.

3D Printed Guns are Already Highly-Regulated

‘60 Minutes’ also claimed, “…federal gun law only regulates a part, called a frame or a lower receiver.”

That’s simply incorrect.

In order to manufacture and sell these custom built firearms, one must obtain a special license from the ATF. Their website states, “Any person “engaged in the business” as a manufacturer must obtain a license from ATF.”

Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski tweeted this in response to the CBS report, “To be clear, it is currently not legal for prohibited persons (like convicted felons) to build their own firearms. Nor is it legal to sell guns you’ve manufactured yourself unless you have a license. It is legal for the law-abiding people to build their own guns for personal use.”

Law-Abiding Americans Have Been Building Guns Since USA’s Inception

The concept of custom-building firearms, most recently with popular semi-automatic Armalite Rifles (AR-15s), isn’t new. In fact, people have been designing and modifying firearms for personal use essentially since our nation’s inception.

Per ATF rules, “An individual may generally make a firearm for personal use.”

Criminals using “ghost guns” in crimes are generally prohibited possessors who shouldn’t be in possession of them in the first place. How does regulating these firearms in question, which already have strident restrictions placed on them, any further deter criminals? It won’t.

3-D Printed Technology is Expensive and Not Easy to Acquire

It’s very hard for individuals—let alone criminals—to obtain 3-D printed guns. They don’t come cheap nor are they easy to procure and possess.

In an op-ed for 3DPrint.com, a self-described leading authority on 3-D printed technology, Scott J. Gruenald wrote, “…making a 3D printed gun is not easy, it is not quick, it is not cheap and it does not result in especially dangerous or deadly weapons. Not only is it cheaper to just buy a real gun in the United States, but it is also probably a lot faster to go buy one, even with any state-mandated waiting periods.”

Conclusion

Criminals will use whatever tool is at their disposal—be it a 3-D printed AR-15, handgun, or knife—to inflict pain onto their victims. Unfortunately for gun controllers, none of their beloved laws or bills have deterred criminals from committing ghastly acts. In fact, they have invited more crime.

It’s time for our opponents finally to get serious about tackling criminal misuse of firearms, not scapegoat 3D printed firearms.

BLOOMBERG LOOKS TO BUY MORE SEATS

Gun control politicians just can’t seem to wean themselves off their addiction to Bloomberg money.

Everytown for Gun Safety, which is funded by antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, announced it will spend $13 million to flip federal and state level election seats currently held by pro-Second Amendment policymakers in Texas and Arizona. Brady Campaign’s Brady PAC announced it will sink funds into the effort, at a half a million dollars.

It’s Bloomberg’s continued effort to campaign to bring the New York-style gun control agenda he adores to every state. He did it in Virginia and he’s looking to repeat. If gun control isn’t passed, he’ll just buy the legislatures.

Bloomberg is only living up to his word. He admitted as much during a presidential townhall, that he bought congressional seats in 2018. The failed 2020 Democratic presidential candidate has demonstrated his hypocrisy on Second Amendment rights and who deserves them. Voters demonstrably rejected him, but he’s not going away.

Bloomberg and his pet project gun control groups Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action pledged to spend millions to help ensure former Vice President Joe Biden leads the most antigun presidential ticket in history, hoping to flip state legislatures along the way.

Shiny Lone Star
Voters in the Lone Star state heard an earful of the Bloomberg groups’ antigun narrative before and roundly rejected it. Texans approve of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and another popular statewide elected, Attorney General Ken Paxton, when they came through for thousands of Texas small businesses and employees. Gov. Abbott deemed firearm retailers “essential” during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing them to stay open for business. AG Paxton prevented counties and cities from enacting their own restrictions on gun stores.

Don’t forget former Texas U.S. Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s (D-Texas) disastrous failures running for the U.S. Senate in 2018 on a gun confiscation platform against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). He crashed and burned only to turn his efforts to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. His gun-grabbing pronouncements fell flat nationally, but impressed presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Flipping the Lone Star state will be a tall order for Bloomberg and his buddies.

Arizona Closer, And President Trump Helps Gun Owners
Also on Everytown’s radar is Arizona, where the group has earmarked $5 million. The Republican-controlled state legislatures are both closer in margins than Texas, with pro-Second Amendment legislators holding a two-seat advantage in the state House of Representatives and a four-seat advantage in the state Senate.

Signs point to a tough reelection ahead for Republican U.S. Sen Martha McSally against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), co-Founder of Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, another gun control group. Voters will undoubtedly be fired up and President Donald J. Trump carried the Grand Canyon state by four points in 2016. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey isn’t on the ballot, remaining in office past November in case a veto check is needed ahead.

Trying to Pull a 2019 Virginia
The gun control groups are trying to replicate the playbook from Virginia last year, where the off-year elections swung the Commonwealth’s legislature to Democrat majorities for the first time in two decades. Bloomberg dumped $2.5 million in that effort. The result was a wave of gun control policies signed by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. But positive signs showed for pro-Second Amendment voters for elections ahead as tens of thousands of lawful gun owners peacefully protested the legislature’s overreach at the capitol in Richmond. Courts ruled Gov. Northam overstepped his authority by closing some firearm businesses.

No one knows how 2020 will shake out with former Vice President Joe Biden likely leading the most antigun ticket in history. But Virginia’s 2019 elections did not see President Trump on the ballot and he’s been a staunch Second Amendment supporter and stood by firearm retailers and workers throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He will be a loud supportive voice ahead.

One thing’s certain, voters are tuning in and hundreds of thousands are now first-time firearm owners. NSSF launched the #GUNVOTE online resource so voters know exactly where candidates stand on firearm issues and what they’ve said in the past. It’s a valuable resource for Americans to make sure they don’t risk their rights at the ballot box.

I just saw this

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 3 Bags Full!

Trump’s Army Secretary Nominee on Guns: Citizens Should Have Same Weapons as Government

President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the army, state lawmaker Mark Green, is under fire for comments he’s made on gay rights, Muslims and guns, once suggesting that Americans should be able to own any weapon the federal government has, even an aircraft carrier.

“The Second Amendment, while it allows citizens to protect themselves from other citizens, goes well beyond just allowing us to defend ourselves from a criminal,” he said.

Green continued: “From a practical standpoint, with the purpose being to protect people from tyranny and secure a free state, the citizenry should be allowed to maintain whatever weapon the federal government has. If they can have an aircraft carrier, I ought to be able to have an aircraft carrier.”

About a month ago, Trump nominated Green to lead the Army, after his first nominee—billionaire investor Vincent Viola—withdrew in February from consideration because of his business ties. The president’s pick for Navy secretary, Philip Bilden, also removed his name from consideration.

Why Regulating ‘Ghost Guns’ Isn’t Practical

Lately, people are up in arms about “ghost guns.” You know, those homemade firearms that use less than 80 percent receivers or are 3D printed and then assembled with other parts people bought off the internet. Millions of such weapons are probably built every year, but a handful gets used from criminal acts.

As a result, we have people calling for restrictions on these weapons.

Now, I could go on about the constitutionality of such measures, but the people who I need to reach simply won’t care. They don’t care about constitutional arguments. Oh, they may say they care about the Constitution and may even mean it, but on guns, they’re willing to accept some level of infringement and it doesn’t matter if I call it rationalizing or anything else.

So instead, I’m going to address this piece from a different perspective.

Despite state and national laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons and individuals with identified mental issues, truly questionable thinking on the part of the powers that be at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Department of Justice, to which ATF officials report, allows what the ATF terms hunks of metal or polymer to be transformed into real guns.

These hunks of metal and polymer are sold in kits that, with relatively little work on the part of the owner, are transformed into real guns. They are referred to as “ghost guns” because they are not marked with a manufacturer’s serial number and do not require a background check prior to purchase.

The frame of handguns and the receiver or action of rifles and shotguns created by licensed manufacturers must be marked with a unique serial number. Those purchasing such a firearm must complete a background check designed to keep guns out of the hands of those who, by law, should not have them.

Since the ghost guns are not finished by the company manufacturing them, instead requiring the final manufacturing operations to be completed by the buyer, they are not considered firearms under federal law.

OK, so, instead of addressing the constitutionality of this, let’s address the practicality.

First, let’s discuss the “relatively little work” required to turn a less than 80 percent receiver into a functional one. After all, these are the words of someone who has never actually tried it. I have taken a less than 80 percent receiver and built an AK-pattern rifle with it. Yes, I used a kit for the rest of the parts, but the receiver was kind of intimidating. I only got it finished because I had the help of a gunsmith at a build party.

The “relatively little work” isn’t necessarily intuitive or easy, especially for people who aren’t particularly handy. Even then, there’s a fair bit of either work or tooling involved, often both. To call it “relatively little work” is to not understand how much work is actually involved.

Keep in mind that a good fifth of the manufacturing of these weapons is incomplete. Would many people be willing to do a fifth of the manufacturing of a car or a home? Of course not. That’s a lot of work, and it’s not really all that different.

Now that we’ve established that there is a fair bit of work required to make one of these, let’s also acknowledge the fact that those who are willing to put that much work in may well be willing to put in even more. This is especially true of criminals who can’t legally purchase completed receivers or firearms.

Let’s be honest, though. That line of less than 80 percent counting as an incomplete receiver may be arbitrary, but so would any other line. And a line has to exist. An AR-15 receiver can be milled from a block of aluminum. Are we going to start declaring any block of metal an AR-15 receiver? If you do, you’re going to have a huge problem with manufacturers who use those same metal blocks to build other things not related to the firearm industry. I don’t think they’d enjoy having the ATF up their posteriors.

Hell, I’ve seen someone take a shovel and build an AK receiver. Are we going to regulate shovels or other bits of sheet metal because they can be built into AK-47s?

As someone who has a few sheets of steel lying around my workshop for non-gun projects, I sure as hell hope not.

It’s easy for someone writing to say that the ATF should regulate “ghost guns,” but the problem is that there’s no practical way to do it. Sure, the ATF could redefine at what point a receiver becomes a firearm, but that will likely push people to build guns complying with the new rules. It wouldn’t actually stop anyone.

Oh, but the kits! Remember how the writer argued that weapons could be completed with kits? He’s right, they can.

But, on the flip side, all those same components can be purchased separately. You don’t need a kit. In fact, a lot of people don’t buy kits to complete their firearms because they want to be particular about each part.

Those same parts, I might add, are used to repair or upgrade existing weapons. If you think people will fight over ghost guns, imagine what happens when you try to regulate people’s repair parts and treat them as firearms. Further, all of those parts were manufactured. That means an enterprising individual can manufacture them all by their lonesome.

That’s the big takeaway here. Nothing you can regulate on this issue will prevent criminals from continuing to do this. Nothing at all. Remember, if they’re doing it now because they can’t buy guns, you’re not going to regulate them out of practice. The best you can hope to do is make it more of a pain, but so long as there is a market–and there will be–some will continue to build these weapons to meet that market’s demands.

It’s easy to say something needs to be regulated, but it helps to at least understand what you’re talking about well enough to know if such regulations are even practical or if they will only impact law-abiding citizens. This writer, clearly, doesn’t.

CCRKBA SAYS GARCIA VICTORY WAS WARNING TO ANTI-GUN LOBBY

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today congratulated Republican Congressman-elect Mike Garcia for winning election over anti-gun-rights Democrat Christy Smith, and said the victory should serve as a warning to the gun prohibition lobby that their big bucks spending effort to fill Congress with anti-gunners is in trouble.

“There is a message in Mike Garcia’s victory,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “You can be a conservative, pro-Second Amendment candidate and win in California, a state dominated politically by anti-gun Democrats, in the legislature and governor’s office in Sacramento, and within the delegation to Capitol Hill.

“Smith’s campaign was supported by the gun control lobby,” he continued, “but dollars don’t vote, people do. And people are getting tired of far-left politics that trample on fundamental rights, especially the Second Amendment.

“Evidently,” Gottlieb observed, “the gun control crowd learned nothing from Michael Bloomberg’s disastrous presidential campaign, which revolved around his extremist gun control agenda. He spent more than $300 million and finished last, and that was among Democrat primary voters, nobody else. Now Bloomberg’s Everytown is planning to spend $60 million to flip Congress and state legislatures this fall, electing more anti-gunners.

“Garcia won on a campaign promoting American values, including the Second Amendment,” he added. “Those ideals seem foreign to the gun ban bunch, which thinks the constitution is for sale to people with the most money. Garcia’s victory this week proves otherwise, and it’s a warning that gun control is not the winning proposition far-left Democrats think it is.

“Garcia’s victory is also a message to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that her party’s gun grabbing agenda could cost them the House this fall,” Gottlieb stated. “She couldn’t even protect a Democrat seat in her own state, which should raise alarms with vulnerable Democrats in other districts all over the country.

“And Joe Biden should also be worried,” Gottlieb concluded, “because his anti-gun-rights agenda is not going to play well in the critical battleground states, where voters are tired of being attacked by politicians like Biden who want to take away their rights.”

MI: Capitol Commission to Discuss Firearms in the Capitol on Monday!

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)-On Monday, May 11 at 11 am, the Michigan Capitol Commission will meet to discuss the possession of firearms in the Capitol and on Capitol Square.  While the meeting notice does not state the Commission will consider banning firearms specifically, this will likely drive the discussion.  Please contact the members of the Commission and respectfully urge them not to prohibit the exercise of a constitutionally protected right by law-abiding citizens on property open to the public.

Michigan law on this matter is clear.  Local units of government are prohibited from restricting firearm possession in public.  Michigan’s firearm preemption law states in full:

“[a] local unit of government shall not impose special taxation on, enact or enforce any ordinance or regulation pertaining to, or regulate in any other manner the ownership, registration, purchase, sale, transfer, transportation, or possession of pistols, other firearms, or pneumatic guns, ammunition for pistols or other firearms, or components of pistols or other firearms, except as otherwise provided by federal law or a law of this state.”

Again, please contact members of the Michigan Capitol Commission before the Monday meeting and respectfully urge them to recognize the right of law-abiding gun owners to carry a firearm for self-defense and to oppose any restriction on the carrying of firearms in the Capitol or on Capitol Square.

May 11 meeting  agenda: http://capitol.michigan.gov/Content/Files/AgendaMay112020.pdf

Capitol Commission Contact information  can be found here: http://capitol.michigan.gov/ContactCommission

 

The Long-Term Failures Of Violence Prevention Programs

As a Second Amendment supporter, I tend to believe that the answers to solving the issue of violence in our inner cities aren’t gun control. Obviously, I’m biased to a significant degree, but my bias is based on observation. After all, look at the 10 safest states and the 10 most dangerous states. You have gun-controlled states in both lists and you have gun-friendly states in both lists as well.

That suggests the issue is a bit more complicated than something that can be solved with a simplistic answer like gun control.

However, it also seems that popular gun violence reduction programs aren’t producing the long-term results proponents hope for.

In 2018, Portland started to rethink how it addresses gun violence. The police bureau sent representatives to Oakland, California, to observe Ceasefire, that city’s gun violence prevention program. Oakland’s program, which targets social services at people most likely to commit violence, is credited with dramatically reducing Bay Area gun violence.

“That is something that we’re using as a foundation to try to build something similar to that here in Portland,” Shearer said in an interview with Guns & America.

Cities across the country — from Baltimore to South Bend, Indiana and Stockton, California — have adopted similar models. And while these programs often have an impact in the year or two after launch, long-term reductions in gun violence can be fleeting.

Ceasefire is based on the idea that even in cities with high homicide rates, the number of people committing acts of violence is actually very low.

“About 70% of all gun violence includes people who are in their 20s to early 30s who has significant criminal justice histories, seven or more arrests, who are part of some sort of crew or clique or gang,” said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, a nonprofit that helps cities implement gun violence reduction programs like Oakland’s.

Typically, Muhammad says, people who commit gun violence have been victims of gun violence themselves, or someone close to them has been a recent victim. Intervene with this small group directly by providing social services or an alternative to violence, the theory goes, and you can have a major impact on gun violence. At least in the short term.

“Ceasefire is about immediately reducing gun violence,” Muhammad said. “And the type of community transformation that is desperately needed is a very long-term prospect.”

Now, this approach actually makes a fair bit of sense. You target people who are most likely to end up committing violent crimes and offer them alternatives to the kind of lifestyle. The idea is to stop violence at its source.

It should work, right? Well, it has and it hasn’t. Maybe.

The problem is that it’s hard to see any long-term results from these programs. It doesn’t help that some communities stop funding the program once violence decreases, thus allowing it to flourish once again.

To me, that suggests the solution isn’t really a solution, but a band-aid. It’s not really getting to the root of the problem, it’s simply hiding the problem like a toupee.

In some cases, though, it doesn’t even do that.

Elsewhere in the country, in city after city, declines in the near term evaporated over time.

In 2014, the first-year South Bend had a program in place, homicides dropped from 78 to 66. The next year, that number ticked back up to 85, down to 81 in 2016 and in 2017 was over 100.

Detroit, where city leaders have credited Ceasefire with reducing violent crime, started rolling out its program to police precincts in 2015. That year it had 295 homicides. Since then homicides have bounced up to 302, down to 261, and back up to 272, according to FBI data. Meanwhile, the city’s population shrank by 1%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Those aren’t the other places, either. Stockton, CA has been heralded as a success after the program did wonders there. Then they cut off funding and the number of murders returned. Now, the average number of homicides is pretty much right were it was to begin with.

So what gives?

Clearly, there are a lot of theories, some of which are going to be dismissed by many typical Bearing Arms readers outright. I know I rolled my eyes when I read this:

“The whole approach is, ‘This is a problem person,’” said Aaron Roussell, an associate professor of sociology at Portland State University. “Not ‘We have systematically and intentionally underfunded these communities and we refuse to deal with issues of race and classism that actually keep these places marginalized.’”

…

But Roussell said the focus on data can distract from deeper societal issues that cause violence in the first place.

“It’s a weird idea that you just want less crime in poor neighborhoods,” he said. “They don’t want to change anything else about the world, but you want to just bring that down. Because it’s basically a series of crimes that made those neighborhoods poor to begin with and we don’t ever deal with that.”

Roussell attributes many of those dips noted before as potentially being cyclical variations rather than evidence they worked.

Like I said, it’s hard not to eye-roll at this kind of thing, but Roussell may actually be onto something. These high-violence neighborhoods are typically places that most folks otherwise don’t care about. They wouldn’t care about them now if folks there would just behave. No one really does seem to care about changing anything else about those neighborhoods. They just want the crime to go away.

And yet, what do we do?

Programs like Ceasefire seek to address these neighborhoods and the individuals most likely to become violent criminals which should, by extension the neighborhoods in question. Yet it’s not working.

Roussell would seem to say that racism and classism are to blame, but I find that a simplistic answer yet again for a complex problem. Or, more specifically, adding a couple of complex issues as the cause for another complex issue is simplistic.

So what’s the answer?

I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that we need to figure it out because people are being killed and that’s being used to justify infringing on the civil liberties of others. That shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone, regardless of what neighborhoods they live in.

Louisiana: House Committee to Hear Pro-Second Amendment Bills Next Week

Next Wednesday at 1:00pm, the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee is scheduled to hear four pro-gun bills that will benefit law-abiding gun owners in the Sportsman’s Paradise.

House Bill 746 allows those who lawfully possess a firearm to carry concealed for self-defense during a mandatory evacuation under a declared state of emergency or disaster.

House Bill 781 establishes that firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, suppliers, and retailers are “Essential Businesses” that shall not be prohibited from conducting business during a declared disaster or emergency.  HB 781 further prevents law-abiding gun owners’ rights from being infringed during proclaimed curfews.

House Bill 140 prevents local authorities and municipalities from imposing restrictions to prohibit the possession of a firearm.  Preemption legislation is designed to stop municipalities from creating a patchwork of different laws that turn a law-abiding citizen into a criminal for simply crossing a jurisdictional line.

House Bill 334 authorizes a concealed handgun permit holder to carry a concealed handgun in a church, synagogue, mosque, or other similar place of worship.

Gun legislation added to massive public safety bill

Debate on a public safety omnibus bill that reached the [Missouri] House floor Tuesday focused heavily on gun legislation, as lawmakers proposed amendments that focus on preserving Second Amendment rights and eliminating many “gun-free zones” in Missouri.

As the penultimate week of the 2020 legislative session ramped up, lawmakers continued the end-of-session trend of adding as many amendments to bills as possible in the hopes that some of their legislation will become law.

Along with the gun amendments, many other changes to Senate Bill 600, a public safety omnibus bill, were proposed. These amendments covered a wide range of topics, including reducing Fentanyl trafficking, permitting EMTs in Missouri to honor out-of-state Do Not Resuscitate orders, allowing Missourians to kill feral hogs and more. But the proposed gun legislation sparked the most heated debate among lawmakers.

Second Amendment Preservation Act

A bill known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which had a whopping 86 co-sponsors, was the fourth amendment proposed to the public safety bill. The bill didn’t make it to the floor on its own, but Rep. Jered Taylor, R-Republic, said the omnibus public safety bill was “the perfect vehicle” to get it made into law.

“This bill is a pro-law enforcement bill that protects law enforcement by not requiring them to enforce federal gun laws,” Taylor said. “They still could be enforced by federal agents; we just wouldn’t be doing it on a state level.”

Rep. Lane Roberts, R-Joplin, was one of two Republicans who said they have strong support for the Second Amendment with hesitations about the bill, which also proposed penalties for police officers who decide to enforce federal gun laws.

“You will note that (the bill) creates an untenable position for police officers. It creates a conflict with their oath of office, and it essentially throws them under the bus and makes them the whipping children for this issue,” Roberts said.

Roberts also took issue with the penalties officers can face if they uphold federal gun laws.

“They can be civilly sued. They can be personally liable. They lose their license. They can be prohibited from being a police officer for the rest of their natural-born days,” Roberts said. “What has that got to do with protection of the Second Amendment?”

He also noted that asking local law enforcement not to enforce federal laws could create tensions with the federal agencies Missourians rely on and need to cooperate with.

Taylor responded by pointing out that he had dozens of co-sponsors on the bill and that current and former law enforcement officers have testified in support of the bill in the past.

“You know, the guys on the streets — the ones who are actually enforcing the laws — who would be forced to be the ones to go do the knocking and the seizure of AR-15s and AK-47s,” Taylor said. “They’re the ones that I’m trying to protect. And they’re the ones that say, ‘Absolutely, we need this.’”

Rep. Sara Walsh, R-Ashland, spoke in strong support of the bill, saying constituents have come up to her in the grocery store asking her to support it.

As the debate on the Second Amendment Preservation Act amendment came to a close, Rep. Tony Lovasco, R-O’Fallon, added an amendment to the amendment that legalized the possession of brass knuckles. As a whole, the new amendment was adopted.

Eliminating gun-free zones

Taylor also proposed an amendment to the public safety bill that would eliminate many of Missouri’s “gun-free zones,” or allow private property owners to determine whether to allow guns on the premises.

Gun-free zones are areas where firearms are prohibited with or without a permit. The bill would remove some areas from that category, including churches, bars and amusement parks. Those institutions could decide their own policies.

Taylor said mass shootings often happen in gun-free zones because people know they can carry out an attack without being stopped in a rapid fashion.

“There’s not going to be anyone there to be able to defend themselves or their family if the need were to arise,” Taylor said. He added that it takes law enforcement time to respond and said the gun-free zones make people “easy targets.”

The debate on the amendment was heated at times, but, ultimately, the elimination of gun-free zones amendment was also adopted into the public safety omnibus bill.

Maryland Governor Vetoes Ban on Private Rifle, Shotgun Sales

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) vetoed legislation Thursday that would have banned the private sale of rifles and shotguns throughout the state……..

Together, SB 208 and HB 4 would have criminalized not only sales, but also actions “such as loans and gifts between friends, neighbors, or fellow hunters.”The two bills would have also resulted in a scenario in which law-abiding long gun owners would have had to pay a fee to the state — to cover the cost of paperwork — in order to sell a gun to a neighbor or a lifelong friend.

Hogan released a statement with his veto wherein he stressed that he had shown openness to signing legislation that promised to help curtail the burgeoning violence in Baltimore and specifically called for the passage of Violent Firearm Offenders Act of 2020, the Witness Intimidation Prevention Act, and the Judicial Transparency Act.

He noted that the Senate acted on his request, but the House did not. Instead, an ad hoc approach to crime was taken, and that approach included the gun controls contained in SB 208 and HB 4.

Laws concerning possession are a form of ‘prior restraint’ and as we have seen, are useless. It’s not what you’ve got that should matter, it’s what you do with what you’ve got that should.

MISSOURI HOUSE PASSES AMENDMENT LEGALIZING BRASS KNUCKLES

Lawmakers approved an amendment to a current law that if passed by Senate and signed into law, would legalize knuckles, more commonly known as ‘brass knuckles’.

The amendment that was passed is part of a larger Public Safety bill, that will be voted on by the House Chamber in the future.

It was first introduced in January by Republican Representative Tony Lovasco.

Documents from the House Session on May 5 says if signed into law, people with concealed carry permits, a valid concealed carry endorsement issued before August 28, 2013, or a concealed carry endorsement or permit issues by another state in their name can legally carry knuckles, with similar exceptions to those who are permitted to carry a firearm.

KTTS News reached out to Rep. Lovasco and this was his response.

The measure was added as an amendment during the perfection process of an omnibus “public safety” bill (SB 600). My amendment removes criminal penalties for possession of “knuckles”, and regulates the carry of them in a similar way to concealed firearms.

The amendment was accepted by the House, however SB 600 as a whole has not yet received a final vote from the chamber.

As to why I offered the amendment, I did so because it’s absurd to me that the mere possession of a piece of metal with some holes in it could result in criminal charges. There are plenty of existing statues that properly prohibit the inappropriate use of these products, and banning them entirely is unproductive and outside the proper role of government.

Regarding the timing, I brought it up during a discussion on another amendment dealing with federal gun laws and the place that personal defense has within the “public safety” category the bill was ostensibly about. Unfortunately, the omnibus SB 600 also contains measures contrary to criminal justice reform and limited government principles and that I cannot support. My effort to add decriminalization of knuckles to the bill was an effort to minimally improve a very troubled piece of legislation.”
–Rep. Tony Lovasco, District 64

Felon Lives Matter

Cutting violent felons loose while simultaneously disarming law-abiding citizens sounds like an over-the-top BabylonBee parody. It’s actually a fairly standard leftist fantasy, and I can only imagine their frisson at seeing it come true. Leapfrog compassion* for the incarcerated dovetails nicely with the cops’ preference to bust up lemonade stands rather than confront dangerous criminals.

This phenomenon is well-understood as anarcho-tyranny, but we feel like a snappier moniker is needed. This is not quite a Darwin Award, since the murderous toll of such policies is never paid by those enacting them. So yeah, anarcho-tyranny. Oh, and pitchforks.

* As in: leaping right over the gated community walls.

Just to point out the gun control script that leaked a while back.
It’s all about how they should use emotion and manipulate terminology and facts
Again, apply Sun Tzu advice:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Just a few significant parts of this. Peruse the whole file at your convenience.

PREVENTING GUN VIOLENCE THROUGH EFFECTIVE MESSAGING

POWERFUL FACTS AND IMAGES
1. Alarming facts open the door to action. And powerful stories put feeling and emotional energy behind those facts.

2. It’s not helpful to try to drown your audience in a flurry of facts and statistics. It is far more effective to zero in on a handful of simple facts that are both compelling and memorable.

3. Here are some of the facts that met that test in the research:

There are no background checks or ID requirements in most states for private sales, including private sales at gun shows.

There are virtually no restrictions on the type of weapons available for purchase in America, including assault weapons and ammunition magazines that store up to 100 bullets and can shoot 20 rounds in 10 seconds.

Police and law enforcement officers are more at risk, due to the availability and power of new weapons.
Reinforcing example: Police forces in places like Chicago and Miami are outfitting officers with assault weapons so that they aren’t outgunned by criminals.

4. It’s not just about words. Powerful and emotionally-engaging images are vitally important reinforcers of strong messages. For example, intimidating images of military-style weapons help bring to life the point that we are dealing with a different situation than in earlier times.

OVERALL MESSAGING GUIDANCE
KEY MESSAGING PRINCIPLES

#1: ALWAYS FOCUS ON EMOTIONAL AND VALUE-DRIVEN
ARGUMENTS ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE, NOT THE POLITICAL
FOOD FIGHT IN WASHINGTON OR WONKY STATISTICS.
It’s critical that you ground your messaging around gun violence prevention by making that emotional connection. Don’t skip past emotional arguments and lapse into a passionless public policy voice. And don’t make the gun violence debate seem as if it is a political “food fight” between two interest groups.
There is a reason why the NRA falls silent at times of high-profile gun violence incidents. The last thing they want is an American conversation centered on the terrible toll that gun violence takes on people’s lives.

#2: TELL STORIES WITH IMAGES AND FEELINGS.
Our first task is to draw a vivid portrait and make an emotional connection. We should rely on emotionally powerful language, feelings and images to bring home the terrible impact of gun violence. Compelling facts should be used to back up that emotional narrative, not as a substitute for it.
WARNING: Don’t break the power and undermine the value of emotionally powerful images and feelings by appearing squeamish or apologetic in presenting them

#3: CLAIM MORAL AUTHORITY AND THE MANTLE OF FREEDOM.
We should emphasize that one fundamental freedom every American should have is the freedom to be safe in our homes and neighborhoods – freedom to live our lives without the constant threat of gun violence hanging over our heads.
The NRA likes to talk about its work as the defense of American freedom. Recognize that, depending on the audience, both sides of the debate have the opportunity to claim moral authority. But, don’t yield that ground. Fight for it by emphasizing that a reckless disregard for the gun violence that plagues so many people’s lives is morally bankrupt and doesn’t have anything to do with protecting freedom.

#4: EMPHASIZE THAT EXTRAORDINARILY DANGEROUS, MILITARY-STYLE WEAPONS ARE NOW WITHIN EASY REACH ACROSS AMERICA.
We have to make clear to people that this isn’t a conversation about your grandfather’s hunting rifle. The fact that military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are routinely available to people in most states is alarming – and surprising – news to many Americans.

#5: EMPHASIZE THAT AMERICA HAS WEAK GUN LAWS AND DON’T ASSUME THAT PEOPLE KNOW THAT.
It is important to emphasize that current laws allow easy access to guns for criminals, mentally unstable people, and even terrorists. Generally speaking, the public makes the assumption that our nation’s gun laws are much stronger than is actually the case.
The truth is, it is far worse than most people think. And when they learn what is really true about our gun laws, it raises serious concerns.

#6: CHALLENGE THE NRA ON YOUR TERMS, NOT THEIRS.
We will discuss the NRA in more detail in the next section. But, at the very outset, it is important to emphasize two critical points:
•
Whether to spend much time talking about the NRA depends upon whether we are talking to our base (where an NRA focus is often worthwhile) or broader audiences (where an NRA focus is far less likely to be helpful).
•
Even with the base, we need to always connect our comments to the NRA’s role in exposing people to needless violence.
Simply “taking on” the NRA as if “defeating the NRA” is our mission never serves our interests. Pointing out the direct link between laws the NRA promotes or blocks and the tragic human impact of gun violence is almost always more effective.
It’s effective to emphasize that the vast majority of NRA members are law-abiding gun owners who agree with common sense laws to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people—the NRA’s officials and lobbyists are the problem.

A new one by Charles C.W. Cooke, editor of National Review.

 

Freedom Is An Issue That Stirs Voters

The American gun-control movement has long insisted that public opinion is firmly on its side, and that its aims are thwarted not by their political unpopularity but by the obstinacy of a handful of over-powerful players. What happened in Virginia at the beginning of this year demonstrates once again that this claim of public support is flatly untrue.

By now, we are well-accustomed to hearing that “Republicans!” or “the NRA!” or “extremists!” have hijacked our elections and set about destroying the prospect of meaningful “gun-safety” reforms in the United States. But, if that is true, what should we make of Virginia’s failure to push through the gun ban that the governor and others had so confidently promised?

Certainly, one cannot blame the Republican party, which fared so poorly during the last set of state elections that the Democrats were left in charge of every branch of state government. Nor can one blame the country’s pro-Second Amendment advocacy groups, which, as usual, were outspent in the state. And one cannot claim with a straight face that the Democrats did not care enough about the issue, given that they campaigned on imposing new restrictions, promised after they won that they would impose new restrictions and, at the first opportunity, tried to impose new restrictions. Could it be, perhaps, that when push comes to shove, limiting the right to keep and bear arms is a losing proposition in America?

The scale of the reaction in Virginia suggests the answer is “yes.” Gov. Ralph Northam and the Democratic legislature insisted they were going to prohibit the sale of the most-commonly owned rifle in the United States and ban and confiscate standard-capacity magazines. In return, the people of Virginia insisted they were going to do no such thing. Six cities and 91 out of the state’s 95 counties passed resolutions declaring themselves Second Amendment “sanctuaries.” In Richmond, NRA-ILA organized lobby day, where more than 2000 members met with lawmakers to voice their opposition to new gun laws. A week later a rally against the proposals drew more than 22,000 peaceful protestors. And the letters and phone calls flew in by the day. Eventually, the legislature backed down—first by pretending to water down the proposals in a number of entirely meaningless and wholly unconvincing ways, and then by pulling bills before they got out of committee.

At the heart of the gun-control movement lies a terrible misconception as to who American gun-owners are—a misconception that explains a great deal about our debates over the Second Amendment and helps to explicate what happened in Virginia. In the gun-control activists’ imagination, meaningful support for the right to keep and bear arms is a fringe phenomenon, present only among society’s oddballs and outliers, and gun owners are a small, rural, homogeneous and dangerous minority.

In reality, that support exists across the spectrum. Why? Because gun owners are half of the country. Electricians are gun owners. Bankers are gun owners. Teachers are gun owners. Stay-at-home moms are gun owners. Your neighbors are gun owners. They may be quiet about it most of the time, but, when the government tries to strip them of their elementary rights in the name of protecting them, they will break that silence in an instant and stand up to say “no.” In Virginia, it looked for a while as if all the chips had fallen in the wrong place. For the first time in decades, the Democrat Party not only controlled the entire State government, but it seemed determined to use its power to infringe upon the Second Amendment. The game was up, we were told.

And then, it lost its central attempt at a gun ban and possible confiscation.

What happened? You happened. I happened. “We the People” happened. Not today, Virginia.

Giffords’ and Democrat Mayors’ Plea to Congress Can Only Make Urban Violence Worse

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Four people were killed and 41 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago so far over the first weekend of May,” Sun-Times Media Wire reported Monday. “Twenty-one of the weekend’s victims were shot in a seven-hour period from Saturday night to Sunday morning, including five teenagers wounded in a drive-by in Lawndale on the West Side.”

“As Chicago struggles to treat the flood of COVID-19 patients, a surge in gun violence continues to disproportionately affect the city’s most vulnerable communities and further puts a strain on the city’s resources,” Mother Jones complains. “[G]un violence is surging in several major cities—including Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Dallas—and many of those cities’ resources to address the issue are dwindling.”

Several levels of fraud are being perpetrated here, which isn’t surprising, considering the source. The most obvious is the use of the pejorative term “gun violence,” meant to transfer blame from human actors to inanimate tools. Firearms aren’t the issue, nor are people having access to firearms. If they were, we’d be reading about daily bloodbaths perpetrated by members of the National Rifle Association, who number five million strong and are arguably the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet. When was the last time you read about an NRA member committing a “gun crime,” a hold-up, a drive-by or a rampage? Is there any doubt such an event would be headline news, played for all it’s worth, and shoved in gun owners’ faces at every opportunity?

So perhaps the issue is the “wrong” people having access to firearms? If you advocated racist policies, like Everytown and Demanding Moms bankroller Michael Bloomberg, you’d be pointing to the numbers for “male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25,” and using that as an excuse to disarm them all, regardless of who they are as individuals endowed with certain unalienable rights. It disregards the racist roots of gun control and the strides for freedom made by leaders of groups like Deacons for Defense and Justice and undermines the needed messages from important contemporary voices.

Still, there’s no arguing which communities the problems with violence are coming from. The anti-violence groups themselves admit as much, as does the Giffords group and a coalition of mayors petitioning Congressional leaders for more money. While they claim to be all about “violence interruption and targeted outreach,” it’s inescapable that every signatory to the letter is a rabid gun-grabber and a Democrat.

So while Giffords’ executive director Peter Ambler offers pandering weasel words like “In the midst of a difficult situation, violence interrupters and street outreach workers are providing hope and lifelines to communities who need it,” never doubt for a moment that his goal is citizen disarmament, and the goal of the mayors is a monopoly of violence. What such urban wealth redistribution programs really do is keep a handful of manageable voices parroting a narrative that the problem is with guns. They make it look like the “political leaders” are “doing something,” helping them retain and grow their power.

Having Congress provide more money for that will only make everything worse. That means more people will die. With “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day.
Think about what it would really take to “end urban violence” using guns – especially since those committing the acts of violence invariably are already breaking every “gun law” in the books, starting with having them in the first place. It would take nothing short of the complete elimination of all guns outside of “authorized” possessors to achieve the goal, and that’s clearly not going to happen – first because there aren’t enough enforcers to kill all of us who will not disarm, and also because anyone trying to do so legislatively would see the same “success” as the so-called “war on drugs.”

No doubt the ones who would profit the most would be cartels, which would add a whole new turf war dynamic.

The truth about urban “gun violence” is it’s not about guns, but about “progressive” fraud that keeps charlatans in power through a seemingly endless cycle of dependency and manipulation. True, race is a factor—not as a cause of violent crime, but as an indicator of populations most influenced and thus victimized by a continuing history of destructive collectivist controls over the economy, over education, and over the lives of those trapped in a corrupt system.

Judge clears way for NRA challenge to gun law passed after Parkland shooting

A federal judge has refused to dismiss the National Rifle Association’s challenge to a 2018 state law that blocked people under age 21 from buying guns.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office argued that Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker should dismiss the case, which challenges a law that the Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott approved after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

But Walker, in an eight-page decision Friday, denied the state’s request to dismiss the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in January. Walker made clear that he was not ruling on the NRA’s underlying arguments that the law violates constitutional Second Amendment and equal-protection rights — only that the case should be allowed to move forward.

“It is important to keep in mind the narrow issue before the court at this stage of the proceedings. This court is not asked to, and does not, decide whether (the law) is constitutional. Rather, the question is whether plaintiffs’ complaint contains ‘enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face,’” he wrote, quote a legal precedent.

The law, which the Legislature rushed to pass after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre, says that people under age 21 cannot buy firearms, including rifles and shotguns. A federal law already banned licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to people under 21, and the state law broadened that to also prevent private sales of handguns to people under 21, according to court documents.

“Consequently, 18-to-20-year-old adult citizens in Florida are now prohibited from purchasing any firearm from any source,” Walker wrote.

“Can’t stop the signal.…”

Deterrence Dispensed , the developer of a printed AR-15 and Glock, now have come up with a printed auto-sear for the Glock. As always, the disclaimer that the manufacture of a firearm that can fire more then one shot by the single function of the trigger is highly regulated by U.S law.

As Gun Sales Rise, Education and Training Are Critical

What I am about to say may surprise some people, especially considering that I am the president and founder of the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA). Despite the fact that I have been pleasantly surprised by the large swath of Americans who are working to improve their preparedness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic — indeed, the last two months have seen record firearms sales — I want to emphasize that going out and purchasing a gun is not the sole requirement of actually being prepared. Rather, it’s a small step at the beginning of a lifelong and life-changing journey for millions of Americans who want to keep their loved ones safe.

As the coronavirus pandemic has spread in recent weeks, many Americans have begun truly evaluating their own levels of personal security and preparedness for the first time and are also considering what they would do if they were ever forced to protect themselves or their families.

The result of such evaluations? Record firearms sales in virtually every state and municipality across the country. Gun sales in the states most affected by the virus thus far (California, New York and Washington come to mind) have been particularly high. Images of Americans — many of them first-time gun owners — lined up at gun stores and sporting-goods stores have become commonplace.The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) reported a 168 percent spike in ammunition shipments for the week ending March 14. Figures from the FBI show 3.7 million background checks were done that same month—the most for a single month since the system began in 1998.

Perhaps not surprising in a world where seemingly everything is politicized, particularly when it comes to firearms, anti-gun groups and politicians have predicted that rising gun sales, coupled with schools being closed, will lead to more accidental shootings and deaths. Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, recently claimed, for example, that an “unintended consequence of these panic-induced purchases in response to COVID-19 could be a tragic increase of preventable gun deaths.”

Try again, Mr. Brown. The reality is that this type of fearmongering and effort by some to use the pandemic to further erode gun rights is not rooted in fact. Even as gun ownership has consistently risen year after year — with roughly 100 million gun owners in the U.S. today — preventable accidents have steadily decreased; there was a 44 percent decline from 1999 to 2018. A recent report from the National Safety Council, a reference resource for safety statistics, shows that preventable or accidental gun-related deaths totaled only 458 cases in 2018, which was the lowest figure since the organization began keeping record in 1903. This represented just 1 percent of all firearms fatalities in 2018, even as concealed carry permits have soared by more than 215 percent in recent years.

One key reason for this is that responsible gun owners take firearms safety very seriously. Many of these individuals have proven that they are willing to comply with the law by fulfilling all of the requirements associated with obtaining a concealed carry permit. In fact, a recent report by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that concealed carry permit holders are among the most law-abiding demographic of Americans today.

All of this aside, the bottom line is that all of us share the common goal of working to reduce future tragedies. Being a responsibly-armed American does not stop with your constitutional right to bear arms. In fact, making the decision to carry a firearm, or even to simply keep a gun for home defense, is where the real responsibility begins.

In addition to firearms safety, education and training must be top priorities for all gun owners, particularly for the thousands of Americans who have purchased a firearm for the first time in recent weeks. There’s no substitute for live-fire training, and many gun ranges have closed their doors during this pandemic, but gun owners still have the option to access countless online training materials and courses from knowledgeable instructors.

Safe firearms storage is also critical. Every new gun ships with a gun lock. A gun owner should use that lock or another secure storage device any time he or she is not either training at a range or carrying said sidearm. Many police and fire stations offer free gun locks — no questions asked. Again, when not in use, a firearm should be stored in a secured lockbox to which only the lawful owner or another authorized individual has access.

There will continue to be political and policy disagreements about gun ownership in the coming days — and beyond — and that’s OK. But right now, as millions of Americans continue to embrace their right to self-protection and others still are just starting to open their minds to the responsibly-armed lifestyle, we need to remember that education, training and safety must remain the uncompromisable tenets on which we all stand.