Close the Gun Show Loophole

A recent poll from Mayors against Illegal Guns found that 74 percent of NRA gun owners and 87 percent of non-NRA gun-owners support mandatory criminal background checks in order to purchase a firearm. However, even with this public support, there remain loopholes that allow 40% of gun purchases to occur without a background check, with no questions asked.

From Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

You know what the most common pro-gun response to this suggestion is? "There is no such thing as the gun show loophole." 

They figure the more time they can make us waste arguing about the terminology, the longer this blatant offense against common sense will continue.  Maybe they're right.  Progress certainly is slow in spite of the overwhelming agreement even among gun owners.

What's your opinion? Is it a genius tactic to argue for years about whether it should be called the "gun show loophole" or something else?

I prefer "private sale loophole," but since we all know what we're talking about, I object to all the obfuscation and diversion.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Accidental Shooting of Pre-teen CA Girl - Investigation Ongoing

Local news reports

Authorities say an 11-year-old girl is in condition after she was accidentally shot by a 12-year-old boy in San Bernardino County. 

The sheriff's department says the shooting occurred Sunday in the San Bernardino Mountain community of Angelus Oaks. 

Deputies were investigating how the boy got a hold of the gun and if the firearm had been properly stored.

Well, at least that's something. In California that take it seriously enough to actually have safe storage laws.

Any time a kid gets ahold of a gun, an adult gun owner should be held responsible.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Accidental Shooting in Texas - Two Women Hurt - Gun Owner Gets a Slap on the Wrist

Local news reports

A man faced criminal charges after his 14-year-old nephew accidentally used his weapon to injure two women at a family gathering Saturday night.

Brian Ariel Bazan, 29, was comparing hunting firearms with one of his cousins when Bazan’s nephew got a hold of a .45-caliber handgun, said a witness who refused to give a name.

The 14-year-old grabbed the gun, fired once and injured two women. The single projectile struck a 19-year-old in the upper chest, went through her back and struck a 45-year-old in the leg.

Investigators do not believe it was the child’s intent to harm his two relatives, but a McAllen municipal judge charged him with deadly conduct, a Class A misdemeanor, and transferred him to the custody of the Hidalgo County Juvenile Detention Center.

Bazan also faced misdemeanor Class A charges for making the firearm accessible to his nephew, Morales said. A judge issued him a $3,000 personal recognizance bond.

That sounds like the responsible adult gun owner gets less of a punishment than the kid. Going to juvie is no joke for a 14-year-old, but a misdemeanor gun charge is.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

It's the Assault Weapons - The High Production and Indiscriminate Sale

Peace, Earth and Justice News reports

“The United States should stop producing so many weapons, which cause us so much harm. That country also suffers from so much violence, as billions of dollars go into manufacturing guns.”

That is the message that anti-crime activist Fernando Ocegueda will take to the public in the United States, during a one-month visit to that country by the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, made up of 70 family members of victims of violence in Mexico.

“We are feeling hopeless because we are ignored,” said Ocegueda, who sells electronic goods. “Our mission is to raise awareness about the indiscriminate sales of (assault) weapons, which flow over the border into our country, where they generate so much violence.”

It's embarrassing when we have to be told by someone outside the country. We should be telling ourselves this. Of course, we are doing exactly that.  We are telling ourselves that the gun manufacturers are producing more guns than can possible be absorbed within our country by legitimate buyers.  They know a certain amount of their production goes quickly into criminal hands.

And to make matters worse, they pay the NRA and the gun lobby handsomely to keep it that way.

These are some of the most disreputable businesses in the country.   It's important that we strrive to bring greater awareness to this problem.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Simply Put It's Just a Coincidence

via Jobsanger

Sorry, but you don't have a right to machineguns under the Second Amendment.

It's going to be fun to see the reaction from the gunloons once they realise that Heller-McDonald may have been more of a Pyrrhic victory than they realise.  Mostly because they ignored this bit from the oral argument:

MR. GURA: Well, my response is that the government can ban arms that are not appropriate for civilian use. There is no question of that.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: That are not appropriate to –
MR. GURA: That are not appropriate to civilian use.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: For example?
MR. GURA: For example, I think machine guns: It’s difficult to imagine a construction of Miller, or a construction of the lower court’s opinion, that would sanction machine guns or the plastic, undetectable handguns that the Solicitor General spoke of.

And neglect that Scalia said:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

It's been my contention that these decisions were intended as a way of slowly breaking the bad news that even though it's an "individual right" that term is pretty meaningless when it comes down to the ownership and possession of deadly weapons.

The Wall Street Journal brings the bad news that:

The U.S. courts of appeals for the Third, Sixth and Eighth circuits have all said, in so many words, no right exists to have a machine gun. You can add the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to the list.

In affirming the conviction of Alaskan Matthew Wayne Henry for possessing a homemade machine gun Thursday, the Ninth Circuit held:

We agree with the reasoning of our sister circuits that machine guns are “dangerous and unusual weapons” that are not protected by the Second Amendment. An object is “dangerous” when it is “likely to cause serious bodily harm.” Black’s Law Dictionary 451 (9th ed. 2009). Congress defines “machinegun” as “any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b). The machine gun was first widely used during World War I, where it “demonstrated its murderously effective firepower over and over again.” William Rosenau, Book Note, The Origins of the First Modern Weapon, TECH. REV., Jan. 1987, at 74, (reviewing John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (1986). A modern machine gun can fire more than 1,000 rounds per minute, allowing a shooter to kill dozens of people within a matter of seconds. See George C. Wilson, Visible Violence, 12 NAT’L J. 886, 887 (2003). Short of bombs, missiles, and biochemical agents, we can conceive of few weapons that are more dangerous than machine guns.

Oh dear. What could be worse?  Perhaps the head of the UK's National Rifle Association saying that US Gun Loons are crazy:

Mabbott shakes his head. His reaction couldn’t be more different from that of the American National Rifle Association (NRA) following last month’s “Batman” shooting in Colorado, which left 12 people dead. One member of the American NRA, which is essentially the militant wing of the Republican Party and has a staggering seven million members, actually argued that the toll would have been lower if guns had been allowed in the cinema.

“They are fanatical,” says Mabbott. “Their main aim is to lobby for the protection of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. I once had to sit through a diatribe from their CEO and it made me physically ill.”

Unfortunately, most people see the picture of the US NRA as an organisation for lunatics, criminals, and just plain whackjobs. Too bad the gunloons don't get that's how they are perceived.

Inexplicable Obama Hate

via Parsley's Pics an article by Frederick Stecker

In late October 2011, the Republican Party of Virginia sent out a cartoon-drawn Halloween card. Reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the card portrayed in one section mindless zombies in lockstep, shouting out “O–Bama;” other sections had ghoulish depictions of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama with a bullet hole in his head. On June 17, 2012, the Helena, Montana Independent Record reported that the Republican Party of Idaho’s convention hosted Rush Limbaugh as guest speaker. Outside the convention hall there was an outhouse. A sign declared it to be “Obama’s Presidential Library”; it too was riddled with bullet holes, and inside the outhouse hung the president’s “birth certificate” as well as scrawled messages regarding the sexual availability of Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi. In both cases, Republican Party spokespersons downplayed these incidents as minor infringements of good taste.

What is going on here? These are uncertain times, but it is worth asking: When, in presidential politics, is it okay to create hate?

I don't think this type of attitude and action can be explained by overly-exuberant politics.

I believe whenever we encounter inexplicable Obama hate, the reason is racism.

What do you think?