Tag Archives: freedom

Gun Control Fools are Everywhere

Posted on by
Reply

Todd Starnes, writing for Fox News tells has this example, a dark of night (literally) raid on the home of a gun owner.

New Jersey police and Dept of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

The father’s lawyer, Evan Nappen, said,

Someone called family services about the photo. …  They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house.  They even threatened to take his kids.

DCF naturally had excuses. A “spokesperson,” while ducking comment on the specific raid assured us all that

The department has a child abuse hotline for the state of New Jersey and anybody can make a call to that hotline.  We are required to follow up on every single allegation that comes into the central registry.

Of course they are.  With police raids, and not with an individual representative of the department.  Because all gun owners are crazies.

It gets better: the father was told [by the raiding police]

I was being unreasonable and that I was acting suspicious because I wouldn’t open my safe[.]

It’s suspicious behavior to insist that Constitutionally acknowledged individual rights be honored.  It’s suspicious behavior to object to a warrantless search.  It’s suspicious behavior to object to legally owned weapons being inventoried by a government.

This is one of the reasons we have the 4th Amendment: to protect us against exactly this sort of governmental arrogance.  These government men knew they were the ones being…unreasonable and suspicious.  After threatening to get a search warrant so they could conduct their search, they never did.

This is the offending image:

Notice another example of the stupidity of gun control, especially proposals wanting to ban particular weapons.  That’s a .22 rifle, not a “semi-automatic assault weapon.”

Oh, and the boy has a New Jersey hunting license, and he’s passed the state’s hunter safety course.

Of course, nothing wrong having been done (by the victims, anyway), no charges were filed.

Gun Control Hypocrisy

Posted on by
Reply

Colorado has passed its gun control bills into law.  Included in that set is a limit on the size of semi-automatic rifle ammunition magazines to a maximum of 15 rounds.  In response to Magpul Industries’ statement that they would leave Colorado if the bills were passed, those good Democrats passed an amendment:  Magpul could make any size magazine they wished so long as the larger ones were not sold in Colorado.

State Congressman Mark Waller (R) has the right of it, noting the Democrats’ monumental hypocrisy.

[Y]ou can sell [magazines] at any other place where any of these tragic shootings have happened.  …a monumental inconsistency in their thought process.

Yeah.  Can’t sell normal magazines in Colorado, but feel free to sell them in, oh, say, Newtown, CT.

That’s the problem with interfering with freedom.  The damage is far-reaching, and it’s tough to do without the dishonesty of hypocrisy.

More Obama Sequester in Action

Posted on by
Reply

A few of items.

Congressman Ted Poe (R, TX) is wondering about sequester cuts to tuition aid for our military veterans while we continue to send education aid to Pakistan.  The Marines, for instance, had spent $47 million tuition aid in 2012, while nearly $13 million went to Pakistan for “higher education.”  And then, post-sequester, the Obama administration committed another $37 million to the Pakistan program.

Hmm….

And there’s this example of Obama cynicism.  Recall that the US Department of Agriculture would be forced to “furlough” a significant portion of its meat inspectors, among other personnel.  In the meantime, though, and again post-sequester, the Obama administration

continues to pursue a “partnership” with the Mexican government to “raise awareness” about food stamps among immigrants from that country.

In complete disregard for current immigration law that says immigrants can’t come in unless they are, or can reasonably be expected to be, self-supporting.

And this:

School officials on Native American reservations across Minnesota are forced into making cuts to their current budgets in anticipation of sequester cuts.  These  are programs that had been making progress, improving high school graduation rates by the small, but concrete, 3% per year.

But in post-sequester DC, a six-figure income position was created for a former aide to Congressman Charles Rangel (D, NY) with the important title of Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African-Americans.

Apparently some uses for post-sequester money are more important than others.  Especially when there’s political gain to be had.

Another Victory over Big Government

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s the long and the short of it, as summarized in The Wall Street Journal:

A federal judge this week struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people’s records without a court’s approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional.

US District Judge Susan Illston (Northern District of California) ordered the government to stop sending national security letters or to stop trying to enforce gag orders related to them, but she stayed her order pending the government’s appeal.

Of course, it’ll go to the 9th Circuit, which means it will go on to the Supreme Court, so the fight isn’t over.  But this is an excellent start.

Illston’s opinion decried these violations of Americans’ individual freedom:

[The] pervasive use of nondisclosure orders…creates too large a danger that speech is being unnecessarily restricted.

She added [emphasis added]:

[T]he statute impermissibly attempts to circumscribe a court’s ability to review the necessity of nondisclosure orders.  …the NSL nondisclosure provisions significantly infringe on speech regarding controversial government powers.  …  As written, the statute expressly limits a court’s powers to modify or set aside a nondisclosure order to [certain] situations….  The statute’s intent…is incompatible with the court’s duty to searchingly test restrictions on speech.

There are two problems with these letters.  One is that they allow searches without a court’s warrant.  The FBI can use them to search for phone data and for financial and electronic records, and all the FBI agent needs is his Field Office Special Agent in Charge to say it’s all jake.  This is a clear violation of our 4th Amendment.

The other problem worsens this exponentially: the FBI can require (or could before Illston’s ruling) the recipient of the letter to keep quiet about his receipt—denying the owner of the records any opportunity to respond to the search before it happens.  This also denies two critical aspects of the 1st Amendment: that right to speak of receipt and the duty of a court to adjudicate any allegation of a 1st Amendment violation.

Illston’s ruling can be read here.

Gun Control, Progressive Style

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has jammed into a gun control bill making its way through the Senate an amendment that adds Draconian Federal government control over our individual right to keep and bear arms.  Schumer first Dragoons the states.  Section 102 of the gun control bill, with his amendment, is aptly titled:

SEC. 102. PENALTIES FOR STATES THAT DO NOT MAKE DATA ELECTRONICALLY AVAILABLE TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.

Under this section, the US Attorney General is allowed to withhold up to 4% of Federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies in any state that respects its citizens’ privacy vis-à-vis the Federal government by refusing to provide its state’s data to the NISC.  After a five-year “grace” period from implementation of the Senate’s legislation, the US Attorney General is required to withhold 5% of that funding.

Charles Cooke, writing for National Review Online, provides a description of other parts of the Schumer Amendment.  On the matter of “transfers” of firearms between household members, Cooke summarizes thusly:

If, for example, a gun owner leaves his home for more than seven days—leaving his firearms with his roommate, or gay partner, or landlord—he’ll be committing a felony that carries a five-year prison term.  And while married couples are exempted from falling afoul of that provision, the family exemptions apply only to recorded “gifts” and not to “temporary transfers.”

Don’t take that business trip of eight days without incurring the hassle  of taking all of your firearms with you (or the jail term in New York, if you do).  If you leave them behind, you and your spouse will become Schumer-felons on the eighth day.  Unless you formally “gifted” those weapons to your spouse, using the attendant paperwork to effect the transfer, before you left.  After which, your spouse better not leave for more than seven days without exercising one of those same options.

Cooke understates the problem of “transfers” of firearms between friends, though.  Cooke summarizes thusly:

[I]t would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend so that he can go shooting.  Want to give your pistol to your neighbor so he can pop down to the range for a few hours but don’t have time to go with him?  Sorry, better make sure you look good in orange.

But Schumer’s amendment says, in SEC. 202. FIREARMS TRANSFERS, paragraph (2)(D), that the transfer must occur at the firing range.  The owner still has to take the time to accompany the friend to the range and effect the “transfer” there.

Moreover, Schumer’s amendment requires that regulations be written to require a paper record be created for every transfer:

(ii) shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee….

Want to lend your piece to your friend for his use at the firing range?  Go with him to the range to make the weapon loan, and then fill out a ream of Federal paperwork concerning that loan.  Every time.

Welcome to Progressivism.

Schumer’s amendments can be viewed here and here.