Yes, it would be nice, but this is the usual ‘grandstanding’ that even if it makes it through the house wouldn’t make it past a demoncrap filibuster, and even less a POTUS veto. And everyone knows it.

Republicans Introduce ‘RIFLE Act’ To Remove NFA $200 Tax

A group of 13 Republican U.S. Senators led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas has introduced legislation to remove the $200 tax imposed on firearms and suppressors regulated under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA).

In an official announcement, Cotton’s office listed the following facts:

  • The 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) regulates short-barreled shotguns and rifles, fully automatic firearms, suppressors, and a catchall category of explosives. In addition to background checks and registration, NFA regulated items have a $200 tax.
  • The ATF has acknowledged the tax was intended “to curtail, if not prohibit, transactions” of firearms. The $200 tax, unchanged since 1934, is equivalent to $4,648 in today’s dollars.
  • Since 2018, ownership of NFA regulated items have grown by more than 250% as more sportsmen, shooters and firearm enthusiasts exercise their Second Amendment right.
  • The RIFLE Act does not modify the current checks and registration; it solely removes the federally mandated financial burden on law-abiding gun owners.
  • The legislation is endorsed by the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

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Dem. Sponsor Of WA Gun Owner Insurance Mandate Runs For Insurance Commissioner

The Democrat Washington state Senator who earlier this year introduced legislation to require gun owners to obtain liability insurance is now running to become the next insurance commissioner.

State Sen. Patty Kuderer (D-Bellevue), who has consistently supported gun control measures as a lawmaker, said in a campaign announcement,

“As a State Senator, I have been a vocal advocate for issues such as gun safety, voting rights, and women’s health. I have also been a leading voice on healthcare issues in the State Senate, including sponsoring legislation to create a public option for healthcare in Washington. As your next Insurance Commissioner, I will work tirelessly to protect consumers and to hold insurance companies accountable for their actions. I will fight to expand access to affordable healthcare, to promote transparency and fairness in the insurance market, and to ensure that all Washingtonians have access to the coverage they need to stay healthy and secure.”

She goes on to claim she is “committed to working collaboratively with all stakeholders,” although gun owners may not be included in that definition.

But Kuderer will be facing a Senate foil, at least in the primary. State Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn), an ardent Second Amendment advocate, has also filed for the position. Neither Kuderer or Fortunato would lose their Senate seats this fall.

Kuderer’s measure, Senate Bill 5963, never made it out of committee. She had nine co-sponsors, all Democrats and all whose names are often linked to gun control legislation.

Kuderer is among four Democrats running for the insurance commissioner’s spot. The three others are identified as Chris D. Chung of Tacoma, Bill Boyd of Spokane and John Pestinger of Seattle.

Fortunato also has company from Republican Justin Murta of Snohomish. Two other candidates have filed without stating party preference, Jonathan Hendrix of Seattle and Tim Verzal of Eatonville.

But only one candidate—Kuderer—can be linked to the proposed liability insurance mandate.

Under her bill, any person who owns a firearm would have been compelled to obtain “in full force and effect,” an  insurance policy “covering losses or damages resulting from the accidental or unintentional discharge of the firearm, including but not limited to, death or injury to persons who are not an insured person under the policy and property damage.”

The law would also have required the gun owner to keep valid and current written evidence of the coverage readily available where each firearm was stored.

The law would also have required insurers to ask whether anyone named on the policy owned a firearm and whether it was securely stored.

When Kuderer introduced her bill in January, she was quoted by MyNorthwest.com stating, “This …requirement does not regulate, limit or control the manner or method in which people may keep or bear arms. Instead, it simply says you must have liability insurance.”

KTTH conservative commentator Jason Rantz countered at the time, “This is astonishing. The bill literally regulates and controls both the manner and method in which we may keep and bear arms.”

StunnedTater Cornyn shouldn’t have pushed this bill anyway.
The pushback mail he got must have been white hot caustic.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), along with 41 of their Senate Republican colleagues, introduced a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act to strike down the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) rule on the definition of “Engaged in the Business” as a Dealer in Firearms. The rule ignores the law and congressional intent and flagrantly violates the Constitution to try to require anyone who sells a firearm to register as a federal firearm licensee.

“Once again, the Biden administration is ignoring the law in their attempts to infringe on the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans and their ability to bear arms. This gun-grab flies in the face of congressional intent, unlawfully shifts the burden to individuals to demonstrate to the ATF that they are not firearms dealers, and prohibits lawful conduct protected by the Second Amendment. West Virginians have my word that I will fight this rule on their behalf and continue to be a fierce defender of their gun rights,” Senator Capito said.

The resolution is endorsed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), Gun Owners of America (GOA), and the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Alabama Governor Signs Privacy Bill for Gun and Ammo Sales
Supporters say the law will eliminate concerns that merchants will collude with the government to take your guns.

Without comment, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law this week prohibiting merchants from assigning a merchant code to gun and ammo sales. In a statement, Lawrence Keane, the senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade group for the gun industry, said his organization helped lawmakers craft the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act.

“Alabamians won’t need to worry that ‘woke’ Wall Street banks, credit card companies and payment processors will collude with government entities to spy on their private finances for exercising their rights,” Keane said.

In addition to eliminating merchant codes, which financial institutions use to track goods and services, the law also prohibits any list or registry of privately owned guns. “No American should fear being placed on a government watchlist simply for exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights to keep and bear arms,” Keane added.

According to the NSSF, Alabama joins 14 other states that have already enacted such laws and bills are making their way through statehouses in two other states. On the flip side, the group said California and Colorado are the only states requiring that financial institutions track gun and ammo sales.

In March, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was joined by 31 other lawmakers urging the Department of Treasury to provide guidance directing financial institutions to code gun and ammo sales, arguing that it would allow authorities to flag suspicious or fraudulent purchases. Before 2022, they said there were no merchant codes for gun and ammo sales despite coding for every other type of merchant.

The concept was reportedly proposed by financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who penned the book Too Big to Fail about the 2008 financial crisis. He argued that the market could better address gun violence issues like mass shootings after multiple failed attempts by Congress. However, groups like the NSSF argue that such plans lead to the targeting of pro-gun and conservative groups.

Alabama lawmakers filed the bill at the beginning of April and after multiple readings, it was delivered to the governor by the end of the month. Ivey signed it on May 7 and it was immediately enacted.

Burglary suspect shot while breaking into Dallas home

DALLAS — A burglary suspect was shot while breaking into a home in far southwest Dallas early Wednesday, police said.

The incident happened shortly after 4:30 a.m. at a home in the 7100 block of Nutmeg Lane, near the Cedar Ridge Preserve in an area of Dallas near Duncanville, DeSoto and Cedar Hill.

Police at the scene said people were inside the home when someone broke in. Someone in the home shot at the burglary suspect, police said.

The burglary suspect was taken to a hospital and was in surgery Wednesday morning. More information about their condition and the incident was not yet available.

There were no reported injuries to anyone inside the home.

In a case of classic irony, the ship named after the President who warned about the Military Industrial Complex, gets stuck on deployment because the aforesaid MIC supposed to produce naval surface combatant ships is TARFU.

In Red Sea, US Navy paying the price of shipbuilding failures
The Littoral Combat Ship was designed with the current crisis in mind, instead it turned into a boondoggle. Here’s why.

The United States Navy recently extended the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower while it patrols the shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden protecting commercial shipping from Houthi rebel attacks. The Eisenhower left its homeport at Norfolk on October 14, more than 200 days ago.

The Ike’s sailors aren’t the only ones being forced to spend more time away from home. Many of the carrier’s escort vessels have also seen their deployments extended.

The Navy is struggling to meet some of its operational requirements in part because it simply doesn’t have all the ships it expected. The current threat to navigation in the Red Sea is precisely the scenario for which the Navy invested so much time and resources building the Littoral Combat Ships. The LCS program was sold to the American people as a “networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals.”

The Houthi rebels launching missiles and drones from shore and hijacking commercial shipping in the confined waters of the Red Sea meets the textbook definition of an asymmetric threat in a littoral region. Yet the “little crappy ships,” as they have come to be known, are nowhere to be seen inside the Red Sea. Rather, the Navy has to keep a carrier strike group composed of Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers on station longer than anticipated in an attempt to keep an important maritime choke point open.

The Littoral Combat Ship is one of two major shipbuilding failures from the past 20 years. The other is the Zumwalt-class destroyer. Both programs began in earnest in the years after 9/11 and almost immediately ran into trouble. The Zumwalt program saw massive cost growth which forced Navy leaders to slash the planned fleet size from the originally planned 32 to 7 and finally to the three which were actually built. These three ships cost nearly $8 billion each while failing to deliver promised combat capabilities.

The Littoral Combat Ship program cost $28 billion to build a fleet of 35 ships. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Navy expects to pay more than $60 billion to operate the fleet for its expected 25-year lifespan. Like the Zumwalt, the LCS program’s combat functionality is far less than expected. The ships were designed to be modular with crews swapping out mission systems in port for different missions. Engineers could never get the mission modules to work properly, so the scheme was abandoned.

The LCS program does excel in spectacular breakdowns. The USS Milwaukee famously broke down shortly after it had been commissioned and had to be towed into a Virginia port while its crew attempted to sail the ship to its intended San Diego home for the first time. Other ships suffered from saltwater corrosion, cracked hulls, and broken-down water jets. The Freedom-class variant LCS had trouble with the combining gear linking its diesel engine with the ship’s turbines. The problems grew so bad that Navy leaders essentially threw up their hands and began retiring ships decades before they should have smelled mothballs. The Navy decommissioned the USS Sioux City after a single deployment and less than five years after the ship entered service.

Navy leaders are now scrambling to develop the Constellation-class frigate to fill the capability gap that should have been filled by the Littoral Combat Ship. They decided upon a safer acquisition strategy with the new program by selecting the European multipurpose frigate, a proven design already in service with the French and Italian navies, rather than starting at the drawing board. The Navy awarded Fincantieri Marinette Marine the detail design and construction award for the first ship in April 2020.

Of course, the Navy isn’t simply purchasing a fully developed ship. Engineers began with the existing design and have spent the past several years “maturing” it. Like many such endeavors, changes to one shipboard system necessitated modifications to others and the entire process spiraled. Navy leaders had expected to have the first ship to be delivered in 2026, but they recently announced that because of design problems, supply chain issues, and a shortage of skilled workers will delay the first ship by an additional three years.

The U.S. Navy’s last successful comparable surface shipbuilding program was the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. The final ship of that class, the USS Ingraham, was commissioned in 1989.

Herein lies the danger inherent with unrealistic acquisition programs. When service leaders convince themselves that a radical design will work before the concept is actually demonstrated in the real world, they commit themselves, potentially for decades, to a program that may fail. By spending so much time and money on the Littoral Combat Ship program, the U.S. Navy squandered 40 years of shipbuilding time. That is an enormous lost opportunity cost and now our hard-pressed sailors enduring extended deployments are paying the price.

Service leaders, the civilians leading them, and members of Congress need to remember this case the next time a defense contractor presents them with a bunch of slick conceptual drawings and then fills their ears with promises of transformative capabilities they can deliver at rock-bottom prices. As the homesick sailors aboard the Ike understand well now, if it sounds too good to be true, it definitely is.

 

WHEN VIOLENCE IS THE ANSWER

This book could save your life: Protect yourself from violence and learn survival skills for dangerous situations with this essential guide from a former military intelligence officer.

In a civilized society, violence is rarely the answer. But when it is – it’s the only answer.

The sound of breaking glass downstairs in the middle of the night.

The words “move and you die”.

The hands on your child, or the knife to your throat.

In this essential new book, self-protection expert and former military intelligence officer Tim Larkin changes the way we think about violence in order to save our lives. By deconstructing our assumptions about violence – its morality, its function in modern society, how it actually works – Larkin unlocks the shackles of our own taboos and arms us with what we need to know to prevent, prepare for, and survive the unthinkable event of life-or-death violence. Through a series of harrowing true-life stories, Larkin demonstrates that violence is a tool equally effective in the hands of the “bad guy” or the “good guy”; that the person who acts first, fastest, and with the full force of their body is the one who survives; and that each and every one of us is capable of being that person when our lives are at stake.

An indispensable resource, When Violence Is the Answer will remain with you long after you’ve finished listening, as the bedrock of your self-protection skills and knowledge.

Homeowner shoots intruder in north St. Louis County

CASTLE POINT, Mo. – St. Louis County Police are investigating an early morning home invasion where a homeowner shot at the suspect, who was trying to break in.

The incident occurred in the 2200 block of Empress Dr. in north St. Louis County around 4:30 a.m.

Two residents were inside the home at the time. The homeowner shot the intruder once.

“I hate he got shot but he was wrong, I probably would do the same thing,” neighbor Napoleon Lattimore said. “All he was doing was trying to protect his home.”

After being injured during the shooting, the suspect ran from the scene. A police dog caught the suspect in a wooded area in the 10000 block of Viscount Drive.

An ambulance took the suspect to a nearby hospital and he is being treated for life-threatening injuries. He is described as a man in his 20s. The motive behind the home invasion is still not clear.

Residents say the neighborhood where the shooting occurred is quiet. “We’ve been here for years…but you still have people that come over here, break in people’s houses, and do stuff like that,” Lattimore said.

There’s a Reason Gun Stores Aren’t Named After Most Crimes

Guns end up in the hands of criminals via a number of methods. Many are stolen from law-abiding citizens, and then a large number of those are sold on the streets. Others are obtained via illegal straw purchases.

The ATF acknowledges that only a tiny fraction of one percent of the gun stores out there are complicit in illegal gun trades, but the anti-gun jihadists out there can’t really accept that.

They want to vilify gun stores with even the most tenuous relationship to a high-profile crime. To do that, they need to know the name of the store in question, and they can’t get it.

And that drives some people nuts.

Nearly three years have passed since the 2021 murder of Chicago police officer Ella French, and police and prosecutors have revealed much about her killing: the grim details of her final moments, the type of gun used to shoot her during a traffic stop and how that .22-caliber Glock made its way into the hands of the man who pulled the trigger.

But absent from the public discussion was the name of the retail shop where the gun used to kill French was purchased. Its disclosure has been hindered by a long-standing push by the gun industry to protect the identities of retailers that have sold guns used in crimes.

The law enforcement agencies that investigated her murder and prosecuted her killer could not or would not say. Those that tracked and prosecuted the man who bought the gun used to kill her have been just as silent...

Two decades ago, federal and local law enforcement routinely identified the source of guns used in crimes to members of the media or anyone else who inquired.

That changed in 2003 when Congress, bowing to pressure from the gun industry, approved legislation known as the Tiahrt amendment, named after a former Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., a gun rights champion. The amendment bars police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from disclosing any information they uncover during gun-tracing investigations, including the names of retailers.

The move hobbled efforts by cities to study gun-trafficking patterns and ended what the gun industry has called a pattern of “name and shame,” in which retailers were thrust into the spotlight for selling guns later linked to crimes.

Gun safety advocates and researchers argue that Tiarht created a knowledge gap on a pressing public safety issue and allowed retailers to escape scrutiny. Such information, they say, can help the public determine whether the transactions that put guns in the hands of criminals are a rarity or part of a larger pattern.

Except this particular piece names and shames the gun store that sold the firearm used to kill French. It engages in the very practice it’s trying to suggest that the gun industry was making up or something to prevent local governments from studying the problem.

See, the issue is that there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. If there is, then the person who broke the law should be punished. The issue is that a straw buy isn’t exactly rocket science.

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GUN CONTROL ELITE POLITICIANS REBRAND ‘BITTER CLINGERS’ FAUX PAS AS ‘POOR SOULS’

Today’s gun control politicians are making it clear. It’s not just guns they despise. There are two other primary obstacles to civil disarmament that they loathe.

One is the Second Amendment itself. The other, well, it’s you – the gun owner.

It wasn’t that long ago when President Barack Obama lambasted gun owners who refused to roll over to his gun control agenda. Stumping for his first election to The White House, he told fundraisers at a San Francisco event of smalltown Pennsylvania voters that were left behind, especially by the political elites.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” President Obama said in 2008. Interestingly, it was former U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), later Secretary of State, who rebuked him.

“I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said. “His remarks are elitist and out of touch.”

Of course, that was before she labeled half of America “a basket of deplorables” in 2016 when she was making her second run for the Oval Office.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” former Secretary Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Those were also a whole lot of gun owners who couldn’t buy into her gun control agenda – which included banning the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR), the most popular-selling centerfire rifle in America.

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Barr for NRA President Would Prove Association Has Learned Nothing

“Insiders Reveal the Rot Within the NRA,” John Crump reported Wednesday. “AmmoLand News has been speaking to several insiders on the condition of anonymity at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) about the state of the historic gun rights organization since former Executive Vice President Wayner LaPierre and the NRA was found liable in a civil corruption case out of New York State.”

Revelations show the Herculean task facing the four recently elected “reform candidates” to bring about real changes in the way the association operates. That assumes they can recruit support from other Board members, and exert sufficient influence on senior management and staff to rein in excesses/reverse the corrupt practices instilled in decades of the Wayne LaPierre administration.

It’s been known for some time that powerhouse NRA Counsel William Brewer has long-donated to gun-grabbers, and while separating itself from his disastrous representation will be necessary for the association’s future credibility with no-compromise gun owners, one revelation in Crump’s report seems more immediately pressing and correctable:

“AmmoLand News has also been told that former Congressman Bob Barr will be the next President of the NRA. Mr. Barr is currently on the Board of Directors and is the only one that AmmoLand News knows of who has had a negligent discharge of a firearm. According to our sources at the NRA, Mr. Barr is a Brewer loyalist.”

That was anticipated when then-candidate Jeff Knox told AmmoLand  readers:

“Then in a surprise move, the board elected Bob Barr to replace Willes Lee as First Vice President. Without the Bylaw change, Lee would have been expected to be elected President at that meeting.”

My reaction to reading that: “Who better than a Lautenberg Amendment fanboy?”

That’s a lifetime ban on possessing firearms for anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. And that could plunge people into “horrors stories” over “offenses” including “a wife tear[ing] her husband’s pocket during an argument [or] a daughter throw[ing] keys at her mom – and miss[ing]” — or simply pleading down to the misdemeanor charge to avoid expensive prosecution and the threat of more severe incarceration penalties.

From Gun Owners of America:

In early March, Rep. Bob Barr endorsed the concept of the Lautenberg gun ban, calling it “important and worthwhile legislation.” Barr’s comments appeared as an editorial in the March 6, 1997 issue of USA Today, where he called for only a limited repeal of the Lautenberg ban. While he opposed the retroactive part of the ban, Rep. Barr endorsed the underlying principle behind the Lautenberg gun ban, stating that, “This is important and worthwhile legislation, and we cannot allow its effectiveness to be reduced.”

Read the entire GOA article because there’s plenty more.

And then listen to Barr’s own words when he was running for president as the Libertarian Party candidate and see if you heard any repudiation or apology:

Telling the audience how he improved a bad bill hardly addressed his assertion that Lautenberg “is strong protection for women and children,” or his claim that his amending language kept it from being “declared unconstitutional.” He then goes on to support the concept of “prohibited persons.” So, the answer is, no, he wouldn’t repudiate his past support and spearhead the effort to repeal it. Instead, he preferred you to be caught in the trap and then go through a Catch-22 appeals process.

As an aside, since the LP platform on immigration is one of “come one/come all,” perhaps would-be future NRA president Barr can explain how the “pathway to citizenship” Democrats are paving into a superhighway won’t end up with leftist supermajorities and court appointments that will end up reversing Bruen and giving the gun-grabbers the keys to the kingdom.

See further related posts over at the original The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance.

If you agree this guy doesn’t belong anywhere near the presidency, tell the NRA to “Say ‘NO’ to Lautenberg Bob.”

 

Authorities investigating after burglary, deadly shooting in Lilbourn

LILBOURN, Mo. (KBSI) – A person is dead after a homeowner shot someone he says was burglarizing his home in Lilbourn on Sunday.

New Madrid County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a call from a homeowner saying he had shot someone burglarizing his home on Sunday, May 12 around 4 p.m.

Deputies found a dead female with a single gunshot wound at the home located on Highway 62 near Lilbourn.

An autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday, May 15 at 11 a.m.

The names are being withheld as the investigation continues.