Category: RKBA

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Andy Biggs — Expect House Gun Controllers to ‘Go After Ammo and Ammo Manufacturers’

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) spoke with Breitbart News about the current push for gun control in the House and warned us to be ready to see gun controllers “go after ammunition and ammunition manufacturers.”

Biggs noted a number of gun controls have been passed by the Democrat-controlled House, and even though those controls have not passed the Senate he believes the House will pass even more.

He explained, “I expect some additional gun control legislation to come out of the House. I expect there will be an attempt to do an ‘assault weapons’ ban, I think they’re going to continue to try to eliminate liability protections on gun manufacturers, and I think they’re also going to go after ammunition and ammunition manufacturers.”

Biggs then talked about gun control in the Senate, where he said, “When gun control reared its head again, after Uvalde, I expected 20 members of Senate Republicans to cave and give things like red flag laws and whatever else that the House pushing. But I’m sure what, if anything, is going to get out now, because it has taken so long and they have no language.”

He added, “When you have no language to look at, they start working off what is called a framework, and that leads to infighting where some Senators want certain things but not other things, and that indicates a lack a consensus.”

And Biggs stressed the more time passes the less chance there is consensus will occur.

He also noted the way Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was booed on Friday at the Texas GOP Convention, and said, “That response indicates that gun owners are not real pleased with the Republicans that are undermining the Second Amendment.”

Biggs emphasized the launch of a watchdog group, the Arizona Second Amendment Coalition, a coalition of people he has pulled together to stay on top of the fight for Second Amendment rights.

Members of the coalition include elected officials, student advocates, individuals who work in the firearm industry, and members of pro-2A groups like the DC Project, among others.

Biggs said, “We’re trying to make it a broad-based coalition where we talk about challenges to the exercise of Second Amendment rights. Whether that is an ATF challenge, something the Biden administration is doing, or what policies–local, state, and federal–that may either positively or negatively impact the Second Amendment.”

On January 3, 2022, Breitbart News reported Biggs stressing that carrying a gun for self-defense is part of being a “free American.”

Biggs said, “When you start talking about my wife or me or someone else, we’re talking about self-defense, and the first liberty is the right to life. So, if you can’t defense yourself against the bad guys you start looking like the 12 cities in America that have the highest homicide rate in their history.”

He then added, “You don’t want to look like that. You don’t want to look like Venezuela. You want to be a free American and the way to be free and reduce crime is to allow people to carry guns.”

200 CEOs Sign Letter to Senate on Gun Control Inaction

Earlier this month, some 200 CEOs signed a letter to the U.S. Senate “demanding that Congress take action on gun safety in the form of new legislation,” according to Yahoo News.

Liberty Park Press has a copy of the letter, which declares, “On top of the human toll is a profound economic impact. At a time when our economy is struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, gun violence costs American taxpayers, employers and communities a staggering $280 billion per year. Employers lose $1.4 million every day in productivity and revenue, and costs associated with victims of gun violence.”

The letter, which may be read here, does not reveal the source of the data.

In an alarming interview with Yahoo News, Richard Edelman, CEO at Edelman, a public relations company, told the reporter, “This is 10 years after Sandy Hook, and status quo just won’t do. Somehow, falling back on the rights of citizens to bear arms is just kind of an excuse for delaying what is inevitably in the interests of the communities.”

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which maintains a list of anti-gun businesses, said he recognizes at least some of the businesses that signed onto the letter, and they are already on the list headlined “Don’t Feed the Gun Prohibitionists.”

Edelman told Yahoo “I believe in the Second Amendment.” He insisted he and other business leaders are not asking the Senate “to ban all weapons.”

Gun rights activists contend if they want to ban any firearms, they don’t believe in the Second Amendment at all. Arguing that falling back on the right to keep and bear arms is some kind of a delaying tactic does not impress the firearms community, either, because a right protected by the Constitution is the ultimate “fall back” because it was designed to place a limit on government, not the people.

Edelman says he wants to be sure “guns are used appropriately.” That is a sentiment shared by law-abiding gun owners across the map, but they contend it’s not going to happen with a mandate from government.

The letter, as reported by Axios, includes companies with more than 500 employees, and with fewer employees. It includes pro-sports teams: San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, whose fan base must include gun owners.

This happened days before Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was booed when he appeared at a gathering of the Texas Republican Party. Cornyn is one of 20 senators—10 Democrats and 10 Republicans—meeting lately to hammer out some sort of agreement on new steps to be taken in the aftermath of mass shootings at Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, Texas. Cornyn is reportedly a lead senator on an announced proposed agreement, which has yet to be put on paper.

The Hill reported that Cornyn was “rebuked” by Lone Star Republicans, who adopted a platform that says, “Whereas all gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment and our God-given rights, we reject the so-called ‘bipartisan gun agreement.”

Cornyn walked out of a meeting a few days ago, according to the Daily Mail, telling reporters, “I’m done.”

The news agency said Cornyn told them, “This is the hardest part because at some point, you just got to make a decision. And when people don’t want to make a decision, you can’t accomplish the result. And that’s kind of where we are right now.”

In a related development, TheGunMag.com is reporting that several stores have pulled gun-related magazines off their magazine racks, including American Handgunner and GUNS.

¿Protocolo “Z”? ¡Grupos de Autodefensas para tu y mi!

BLUF
Whether intended or not, the implicit message of Z protocol seems like a dangerous one: Deal with it on your own.

The police aren’t coming, but now in Seattle, they have a name for that

It’s well known that Seattle police are struggling to respond to 911 calls in a speedy manner. But the notion that “the cops aren’t coming” has become such a routine of city life that they’ve created a new way of tracking their nonresponsiveness.

It’s called the “Z protocol.”

I don’t know why they picked the letter “Z.” Maybe because it’s the last stop, the end of the road?

The new “Z-protocol criteria” for 911 calls were described at a recent Seattle City Council public safety meeting. Basically when you call 911, you are ranked as high priority for police response if there’s violence occurring, or if there’s an imminent threat of violence or property damage. Lower-priority calls are also dispatched, but if the police are too busy, these calls can be put into a triage queue for a supervisor to look at later.

A “supervisor will look at the notes on the call and make a decision whether the call will get a response,” a council analyst explained at the meeting. “Or whether the call will be cleared with what they call a ‘Z-disposition action.’

Z-disposition, the analyst summarized, refers to “all calls that are essentially not answered by SPD due to a lack of resources.”

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Know the lying demoncraps infesting the White House, this can almost be seen as confirmation

White House denies claims from guns group that ammo ban is under consideration

The White House is denying a recent claim from a gun foundation that a limited ammunition ban is under consideration, which would drive the price of legal ammunition higher.

The Biden administration supposedly informed Winchester Ammunition that “the government is considering restricting the manufacturing and commercial sale of legal ammunition produced at the Lake City, Mo., facility,” a spokesman from the National Shooting Sports Foundation told the Washington Examiner on Friday.

A White House official denied the claim.

Currently, Winchester is allowed to sell surplus ammunition after meeting the military’s needs on the civilian market, but Mark Oliva, the NSSF spokesman, warned that banning the practice would “significantly reduce the availability of ammunition in the marketplace and put the nation’s warfighting readiness at risk. Both NSSF and Winchester strongly oppose this action.”

This practice now represents roughly 30% of the 5.56 mm/.223 caliber ammunition sales.

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators announced they had agreed in principle to the framework of new legislation to instill additional restrictions on guns that may have a chance to be passed in the Senate. Twenty senators, 10 from each party, signed on to the legislation, demonstrating the support it would need to pass the 60-vote threshold.

A White House official told the Washington Examiner that the reports on a possible ban “are way off,” while Oliva warned that the implementation of such a policy “jeopardizes the fragile negotiations of the framework deal that was agreed to by the bipartisan group of senators.”

After mass shootings, such as the ones in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, it is typical that gun owners flock to firearm stores in order to buy weapons over fears of new gun control legislation. That fear also prompts ammunition purchases, which have led to a shortage. Both gun and ammunition manufacturers saw their stocks go up after the Uvalde shooting.

“The typical hypothesis is that this is an exogenous shock, unanticipated, and as a result of a mass shooting, the reaction is there is an expectation that legislative steps will be undertaken to potentially restrict ammunition, access to guns,” Brian Marks, the executive director of the University of New Haven’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, previously told the Washington Examiner.

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) – The lead Republican negotiator in U.S. Senate efforts to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, while the lead Democrat remained optimistic that lawmakers could vote on legislation before leaving for a two-week July 4 recess.

“It’s fish or cut bait,” Senator John Cornyn said after hours of negotiations that included his fellow Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema.

“I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking,” Cornyn said.

However, Tillis and Murphy later said the talks were close to reaching agreement and added that legislative text for a bill could emerge in coming days……………..

Analysis: Guns Are Normal and Normal People Use Guns

As I hope to write regularly for The Reload, I thought my first contribution ought to say something about how I generally approach American gun culture, which bears on the fierce debates over guns taking place across the country.

I am a sociologist who has been studying American gun culture for the past decade. My approach to the topic differs considerably from most of my gun studies colleagues. Rather than focusing on crime, injury, and death with firearms, my work is based on the proposition that guns are normal and normal people use guns. This is not an article of faith or belief statement for me; rather, it is based on my empirical observations of guns and gun owners.

When I say guns are normal and normal people use guns, I mean it in two senses. First, guns and gun ownership are common, widespread, and typical. Second, guns and gun ownership are not inherently associated with deviance or abnormalities.

The normality of guns runs deep in human history. The use of projectile weapons is behaviorally normal for Homo sapiens as a species. Today’s widely owned civilian firearms are part of an unbroken thread of what Randy Miyan calls “the human-weapon relationship,” stretching back to rocks in the uniquely evolved hands of our prehistoric ancestors. As paleoanthropologist John Shea concludes, “Projectile weaponry is uniquely human and culturally universal. We are the only species that uses projectile weaponry, and no human society has ever abandoned its use.”

Although most societies today – consensually or not – give over to the state a monopoly on legitimate violence and hence the ability to restrict civilian ownership of projectile weaponry, the United States is an outlier in having a significant portion of the population insist upon their right to own firearms independent of the state, a right written into the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions. In early American history, guns were widely owned by those who could legally do so. One reliable estimate found guns in 50 to 73 percent of male estates and even 6 to 38 percent of female estates. These rates compare favorably to other common items listed in male estates like swords or edged weapons (14% of inventories), Bibles (25%), or cash (30%).

Even as the nation has become more settled, more industrial, and more urbanized, levels of firearms ownership remain exceptionally high. Accounting for under-reporting of gun ownership in surveys, a reasonable estimate is that 40% of all American adults personally own a gun, over 100 million people. According to the Small Arms Survey, there are some 400,000,000 privately owned firearms in the United States. Actually, if the average gun owner owns 4 to 5 guns, then the actual number of civilian firearms could be closer to half a billion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, shooting guns is also very normal in the United States. In 2017, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center asked, “Regardless of whether or not you own a gun, have you ever fired a gun?” Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72%) said YES. In population terms, nearly 180 million adults in America have fired a gun. Pew also asked, “Just your best guess, at what age did you FIRST fire a gun, whether you owned it or not.” 63% of respondents answered that they were under 18 years of age when they first shot a gun.

None of this denies that there are what Claude Werner calls serious mistakes and negative outcomes with guns. These range from unintentional discharges to mass public shootings. But huge denominators in terms of gun owners and guns owned means the absolute risk of accidental injury or death, homicide, or suicide is quite small.

I have previously illustrated this using conservative estimates of guns and gun ownership and broad estimates of negative outcomes (including accidental and intentional deaths and injuries as well as non-fatal criminal injuries and victimizations with firearms). I found that just 0.15% of guns and 0.79% of gun owners are involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimizations involving firearms annually.

Looked at the other way around, 99.85% of guns and 99.21% of gun owners are NOT involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimization involving firearms annually.

Of course, the normality of guns and gun owners is not just an academic question. It is reflected in the way many gun control activists and politicians approach guns. At a time when people use terms like “insane” and “addiction” — or worse — to characterize gun culture in America, it’s important to remember that guns are both commonly owned and generally non-problematic here.

Unfortunately, normality is unremarkable. It is not headline news. It is not of concern to social scientists. And yet it is my dominant experience of guns and gun owners.

Will We Choose Hard Work to Protect Our Children in School?

Set aside what you imagine about guns and protecting students at school. Keeping our kids safe is hard work. It is ugly and almost always unappreciated. We don’t want appreciation for what we’ve been forced to do if a murderer comes to school. It is far better to be known for what we prevented. Defending our students from media-fueled narcissistic psychopaths is a dull job. Being present every day so you can stop a murderer is easily ignored because it is out of sight. Contrast that grinding job with the one-click solution of “gun control”. Gun-control politicians say they can put a few more words on paper, hold a few press conferences, and it will be as if evil simply went away.. or did it? We’re conducting several large-scale social experiments at the same time. Our children’s lives depend on what we do.

Each day brings us something new. Our children live in a world where they are exposed to millions of online “friends” they’ve never met. Many of these friends might not even be real people. These online identities influence how our children think and feel. I’m not sure about the benefits, but the downside has been a surge in both narcissism and anorexia. Today, our children constantly compare themselves to an image on a small screen.

We also have millions of children growing up in broken homes. Many of these children are raised by the entertainment media and by electronic games. That isn’t good for healthy children, let alone the children who lack a healthy mom and dad. We also know that we are not all the same and that electronic games are catastrophic for some people. These gamers already feel alienated to an unusual degree. They think they deserve more recognition. Immerse these fragile youngsters into hundreds of hours of violent first-person roll-playing games, and something happens. The psychopaths eventually think to themselves, ‘I’d kill to get this much attention.’ Our voracious news media is ready to oblige. That is new.

In contrast, firearms have been a part of society for a relatively long time. We have lived with guns for at least the last four centuries. We’ve lived with semi-automatic rifles for over a hundred years. The so-called “assault rifle” is over 80 years old. What changed is that we’ve never grown up with mass media in our pocket 24-7 starting when children are 6 years of age. We don’t know what that does to people, and we’re conducting the real-time experiment on our children and on our society. We learn new things every day.

We’ve seen the mass media turn the last murderer into an instant celebrity by giving him a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign. The next murderer notices the attention poured on the last murderer. That creates a new generation of “celebrity-murderers”, a term that didn’t exist as little as two decades ago. We’ve seen over 80 copycat murderers after the attack on Columbine High School, but that data is now several years out of date.

Not only are our children ill-prepared to deal with the media, but adults and politicians do only a little better. The public is influenced by the most outrageous claim that can be taken from a situation or statement. The media and unscrupulous politicians feed us a series of false choices. Please consider each of these claims for more than a minute and you can easily see a context in which each statement is clearly right. You can also see a context in which the claim is clearly wrong.

  • You don’t care if our children die since you won’t disarm everyone,
    • but we’ve seen mass murders where firearms are banned.
  • It doesn’t help to put mental health counselors in school because we have to insure patient privacy and confidentiality,
    • but we’ve seen mental health counselors help, and we’ve also seen counselors be completely ineffective at identifying and treating violent patients.
  • Violence isn’t the answer,
    • but we have to use violence as necessary to stop the attacker or else we’ll perpetuate the next cycle of media-fueled murderers.
  • Don’t turn the murderer into a media celebrity,
    • but we have the right of free speech and freedom of the press.

Let me say it again that we are not all the same. Psychopaths are part of our population and always have been. We’ve seen the behavior of psychopaths change in our modern media environment. Today we see psychopaths target innocent victims in gun-free zones because that behavior rewarded by the mass media. Examined in hindsight, the murderers spent years happily planning their attacks. The threat of celebrity-violence is increasing as a greater number of fragile children are immersed in electronic media, and news outlets reward the latest murderer with greater and more sensational coverage.

We should be hungry for facts about protecting our children. Of course, we worry about what would happen if we allowed volunteer staff to be trained and then to go armed at school. But we already know what happens. We already have millions of man-hours with trained and armed-school staff on campus. Despite what we imagine, these staff have not had firearms accidents at school. More importantly, we have not seen a successful attack at a school when trained and armed school staff were present. We need to set our fantasies aside.

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2 Countries In America: Those Who Cherish the RKBA & Those Who Don’t

It is time for us to think outside the box and form two countries. Instead of civil war I propose civil separation. We are two countries, so ideologically opposed that each feels victimized and dominated by the other. Political leaders need to step up and brainstorm next steps. Clearly lay out the two ideologies and give each state a vote as to where they belong.” ~“Opinion Letter” from reader of The New York Times posted on June 5, 2022, responding to May 27, 2022 “America May Be Broken Beyond Repair,” by the Political Progressive Columnist for the Times, Michelle Goldberg. The letter writer, Dawn Menken, a Psychologist, from Portland, Oregon, is the author of “Facilitating a More Perfect Union: A Guide for Politicians and Leaders,” published in 2021*

If the American public didn’t know the truth before, it knows it now: the battle for the very Soul of the Country is on the line, and Ground Zero of that battle isn’t Uvalde, Texas. It’s New York City, New York, with the Bruen case shortly coming down the pike.

The Nation is indeed “two Countries,”—no less so now than at the time of the American Civil War: friend against friend, brother against brother, uncle against cousin, father against son. But what is different today is that ideologies cut across and into the very notion of what it means to be an American. There are those who hold to the meaning and purport of our Nation as set forth in our Constitution and especially in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. And there are those who wish to jettison all of it in the erroneous belief that our Nation is at its core, immoral, even evil. They wish to destroy the very fabric of a free Constitutional Republic.

But the salient difference between these two Countries rests on this:

Those Americans who embrace and cherish their fundamental right to keep and bear arms, and others who do not.

Those who embrace and cherish their fundamental right to keep and bear arms also recognize and embrace their sovereignty over Government. They understand that government exists to serve the interests of the people. They recognize that Government is the servant and the American people are the sole master.

Unfortunately, many Americans are of a different mindset. Such Americans have bought into the psychological conditioning programmed into them that guns are awful and gun owners are to be despised. Such Americans care not that Government is their servant, not their master. They recognize not and care not that by ceding their God-Given right to keep and bear arms, they have laid the foundation for their own demise: loss of Selfhood, loss of Dignity, loss of Self-Reliance, loss of mastery over their own destiny.

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