Home

Chicago Wants To Reduce Gun Violence By Doing A Gun Buyback That Isn’t A Buyback.

July 16, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

              There’s a self-styled entrepreneur in the neighborhood where I work who walks around every day with a shopping cart picking up empty bottles and cans. When his shopping cart is full, he goes to some redemption center, dumps the bottles and cans in some kind of big machine which turns them into metal and glass that can be used to make more bottles and cans. Then he gets some cash, goes home and the whole process begins again the next day.

              This guy does particularly well in the summer months because that’s when everyone’s sitting outside on the stoop drinking soda and beer to keep cool. Most of the neighborhood folks dump their empties in a garbage can next to their homes which makes it easier for this guy to fill up his shopping cart without having to run around picking up just one can here or one bottle there.

              I started thinking about my neighborhood can and bottle collector when I read a media story out of Chicago where Mayor Lori Lightfoot has announced a new program to reduce gun violence by paying residents of the 2nd City to turn in unwanted guns. She’s setting up a million-dollar fund which will be used to pay anyone who brings a gun to the police – details to be forthcoming soon.

              What Mayor Lightfoot is referring to as a “bold and creative action” is no different than what happens at gun buybacks which take place in various cities from time to time. In New York, the Attorney General has been sponsoring gun buybacks in different cities since 2013 and has collected more than 3,200 guns.

              Do gun buybacks work? It depends on what you mean by using the word ‘work.’ There doesn’t seem to be any direct connection between the number of guns collected in a buyback and the before-and-after stats on violent crime. But there does seem to be some value in buybacks because they alert the community both to the issue of gun violence, as well as helping to promote more governmental and police attention to reducing the violence caused by guns.

              What bothers me about the Chicago program, however, is not whether the buyback will work or won’t work. The problem is that the program is designed, according to Mayor Lightfoot, to incentivize people to turn in ‘illegal’ guns.

“We need everyone’s help to make sure we are doing everything we can to address this horrible plague of illegal firearms,” says Her Honor, the Mayor.

Actually, the good citizens of Chicago don’t have to turn up at the po-leece and drop off an ‘illegal’ gun. All they have to do is give the cops a ‘tip’ as to where the cops can find an illegal gun. 

So, this program isn’t a gun buyback. It’s a gun tip-off. Call the cops, tell them that so-and-so next door has a gun he’s not supposed to have, and you get some kind of reward.

Did it ever occur to Mayor Lightfoot that crimes are usually solved because the cops get an ‘anonymous’ tip? How can you give an anonymous tip about a gun crime if you want to get a reward? And by definition, anyone in possession of an ‘illegal’ gun has already committed a crime.

I don’t want to play Friday morning quarterback but to me, this scheme (to quote Grandpa) sounds pretty fa-cocktd.  Over the July 4th weekend, the Windy City celebrated our country’s independence with 104 people shot, of whom 19 were killed. In other words, we have a gun-violence pandemic in Chicago which is much worse than the pandemic from Covid-19.

Over the July 4th weekend, an average of 5 persons were admitted to a Chicago hospital for Covid-19 illness each day. Admissions to hospitals for gun injuries should be so low.

Back in 2007, our good friend Kathy Kaufer Christoffel published a fundamental article on gun violence, “Firearm Injuries: Epidemic Then, Endemic Now.” 

I think we need to give Dr. Christoffel’s article a new title because gun injuries were epidemic back then, but for sure they are pandemic now.

A New Documentary About The NRA. Guess What? It’s Not Pro-NRA.

July 15, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 12 Comments

              Next week a new documentary, The Price of Freedom, is going to open at theaters around the country.  The movie was made by Judd Ehrlich, a skilled and well-known documentary film-maker, and it’s a look at how the NRA has morphed from being an organization devoted to hunting and sport shooting to an organization that increasingly pushes a radical, far-right agenda about guns. You can view a 2-minute trailer here.

              Guess which side the film comes down on?  Hint: It was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival. And now the film is getting the usual positive notices by the usual liberal media sources like thefailing New York Times.  Actually, the NYT stock price has gone down from $49 on January 20th to $42 today, so maybe the NYT is failing. But what would you expect when Joe and the Deep State are turning the country into a Socialist mess? Anyway, back to reality.

              Talking about reality, Ehrlich’s new film is a realistic view of the NRA’s shift into media stupidity and crowd-pleasing, alt-right pandering during the administration of what’s his name, which began before the election was stolen last year, but today, America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ has once again begun to follow its traditional path. Gone from their website are the loony and vicious video tantrums of Dana Loesch, gone are the conspiracy theories of Grant Stinchfield, gone is the AR-wielding, prancing around of Colion Noir.

              For the boys in Fairfax, it’s back to business as usual, which means sending out the monthly magazine to the members, planning for the annual meeting that’s coming up in September at Houston and re-stocking the online store with what is really a very good collection of clothing and other goodies that promote the NRA.

              I’m assuming that Ehrlich took his camera to an NRA annual show, I’m also assuming that after the interviews with all the big machers like Clinton, et. al., that Ehrlich took the trouble to sit down with a couple of your average, NRA types who are members more out of habit than anything else. If he did, he would discover what I have known since I attended my first NRA show in 1980, namely, that most of the people whose yearly payment of dues is what keeps the organization alive, pay their dues out of habit and could care less about what the leadership says or does.

              Do most NRA members vote Republican? Gee, what a surprise. Are most NRA members older, White males who drive around in a truck? Another big surprise. Do most NRA members believe that liberals want to take away their guns? Surprised me again.

              My response to those surprises is – so what? If you think that NRA members voted for Trump because they really believed he would stand up and fight for their ‘rights,’ think again. Every Republican candidate for President has showed up at every annual meeting of the NRA and promised to protect the 2nd Amendment since Ronald Reagan showed up in 1980 and pledged the same thing.

              When I go to the annual NRA show these days there’s a good chance that I’ll be introduced to the children of NRA members I have been meeting and greeting for the last 40 years. In fact, at the more recent shows I’m introduced to grandchildren. The NRA show is no different from the yearly get-together of the Shriners, except maybe the NRA folks don’t get quite as drunk.

              Incidentally, Judd Ehrlich’s idea that the NRA has been promoting a complete dissolution of all gun laws is simply not true. In fact, the NRA always refers to its members as ‘law-abiding gun owners,’ and it’s not all that easy to abide by laws that don’t exist. The argument between the NRA and its opponents is about whether laws which regulate the behavior of lawful gun owners make any difference insofar as more than 85% of all gun violence, including suicides, happen to be committed by individuals who, generally speaking, don’t obey any laws at all.

Welcome To The NRA: Weisser, Michael R.: 9798505387108: Amazon.com: Books

Not Yet 21 But Need A Handgun? You Can Buy One Now.

July 14, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 3 Comments

Yesterday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just gave the gun industry a very nice gift. They decided a case which if the opinion stands, will allow persons between 18 and 20 years of age to buy and own handguns. There happen to be about 13 million men and women in that age bracket which means that every, single one of them might now be considered as possible customers for owning a handgun.

If you take the trouble to read the majority opinion written by a judge who was put on the bench by Donnie Trump, you’ll find yourself in the same kind of never-never land thinking that was thrown out of virtually every court that Rudy Giuliani and a couple of other so-called attorneys tried to convince about the 2020 election ‘theft.’  The entire opinion, which basically throws out a provision of the gun-control law passed in 1968 (GCA68), rests on a long-winded historical recitation of pre-Constitutional militia laws, plus a selective reading of data on whether guns in the hands of people under the age of 21 represents a community threat.

Behind this approach is the majority’s concern about gun-control laws which would relegate the 2nd Amendment to a ‘second-class’ status, a phrase first used by Clarence Thomas when the SCOTUS refused to hear another 2nd-Amendment case. The dissenting judge, who was appointed by Obama, responded to this concern with this: “Indeed, in a country that boasts a Congress, bench, bar, academy, and electorate that are all attentive to the prerogatives of gun owners, where many may conceal their weapons,1 carry them openly,2 or “stand their ground,”3 and where civilian gun ownership rates are second to none,4 the majority’s second-class status concern is simply surreal.” [pp. 89-90.]

The dissenting judge also reminded his colleagues that GCA68 does not make it illegal for persons under the age of 21 to own or possess handguns, the law simply prevents federally-licensed gun dealers from selling handguns to anyone who is not yet 21-years-old. The judge then goes on to say, and here’s where the rubber truly meets the road, that “the Second Amendment is exceptional not because it is uniquely oppressed or imperiled, but rather because it is singularly capable of causing harm.” [ p. 90.]

Bingo!  That’s what this case is really all about.  Forget all this malarky about whether a kid who was in some state militia back in 1764 could walk into the town’s gun shop and buy a handgun to take home.  There weren’t any gun shops doing business in 1764.

Forget this nonsense about how all these millions of law-abiding Americans are walking around with guns and keeping themselves and their neighbors safe. There’s about as much truth to that crap as there is to the claim that thousands of phony mail-in ballots mysteriously showed up in Pennsylvania and moved that state’s 20 electoral votes to Joe instead of to – what’s his name?

But sometimes even the most flagrant lies and distortions end up being regarded as true. It turns out, for example, that the self-styled militia groups like the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers are now realigning themselves to oppose the government’s promotion of getting vaccinated against Covid-19. Want to prove you’re a real American? Spend a week on a ventilator at your local ICU.

In sum, I happen to think this 4th Circuit decision to let gun dealers sell handguns to kids is a good thing. Because maybe, just maybe it will make my friends in Gun-control Nation ask themselves what we really should do to reduce the injuries and deaths caused by the use of guns.

We don’t need to prevent someone who is 19-years-old from buying a semi-automatic pistol which holds 17 rounds of military-grade ammunition and can be reloaded in 5 seconds or less.  We need to restrict everyone from buying and walking around with those types of guns.

Want to keep a handgun in your house in case one of those ‘street thugs’ tries to break his way in?  I’ll sell you a nice, used, six-shot revolver for $299.95. It will do the job just fine.

What Can We Do About Crime?

July 13, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 2 Comments

              So, yesterday Joe holds a meeting at the White House to figure out what to do about crime which seems to be out of control in cities like Chicago and New York. He’s got all the usual suspects sitting around the table – the cops, the big-city mayors, the ones who always show up when we get worried about crime. And crime is a big problem for Joe right now because the latest polls show that this issue could kill the Democrats in 2022 with the suburban vote. 

              One of the attendees at the meeting was our friend Eric Adams, the newly-elected Mayor of New York City who says he’s particularly concerned about losing wealthy residents to low-crime states like Florida because, as he puts it, “they’re not worried about high taxes, they’re worried about high crime rates.”

              I can just see it now. Some dude who lives in Scarsdale or Chappaqua, one of those wealthy New York suburbs, gets up in the morning and takes the commuter train down to New York. Then he gets off the train in Grand Central Station and switches to the subway for a quick ride downtown to Wall Street.

              Except since he’s all worried about crime, instead of getting off the subway at the Wall Street Station, he gets off at the Fulton Street stop, switches trains and takes the subway out to the Utica Avenue stop, or maybe the stop at Ralph Avenue.

              Know where this dude has ended up?  In the middle of a Brooklyn neighborhood called East New York. Which happens to be not far from the 88 NYPD Precinct, where Eric Adams did his 20 years when he was on the job. It also happens to be the neighborhood where a large number of the city’s 225 murders and 11,033 aggravated assaults have taken place this year.

              By the way, for all the screaming headlines about how crime is ‘out of control,’ the year -to-date increase in New York is around 5%. Granted, this increase is on top of a much greater spike in crime that occurred in 2020, when the ‘Chinese virus’ was supposed to disappear by April but managed to stick around.

              On the other hand, what is alarming is the increase in shootings from last year to this. The increase from 2020 to 2021 in the number of people shot is up by 22%, the number of shooting incidents is up by almost 30%.  To quote Grandpa, this is ‘nisht gut.’

              Now if that dude from Scarsdale wants to walk around East New York or one of the other high-crime Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy (‘do or die’) instead of going down to his Wall Street office at Morgan Stanley and getting to work, he probably should be carrying a Glock or a Sig because, after all, why would he ever want to go anywhere without being able to exercise his 2nd-Amendment ( and God-given) ‘right’ to defend himself against crime?

              But you can’t just walk around New York City with a gun in your pocket the way you can walk around in places where the state legislature has wisely given residents the freedom to strap on a gun. Because in New York City, the Sullivan law makes it almost impossible for the ‘good guys’ to carry guns. It’s only the ‘bad guys’ who carry guns.

              Now the fact that the ‘bad guys’ who commit all that gun violence are using their guns to shoot other ‘bad guys’ happens to be an aspect of gun violence that is usually overlooked. Know how many murders occurred last week in the area around Wall Street? None. Know how many shootings were reported in that same area? None.

              But that dude from Scarsdale who comes into the city every day completely unarmed is making plans to move to Florida because he’ll be able to protect himself from crime once he settles down in the Gunshine State.

              I love how the discussion about gun violence continues to fill the room with hot air.

Catalog | TeeTee Press

Want To Make A Quick Buck? Let’s Start A New Gun Group.

July 12, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 7 Comments

              Want the latest and dumbest scam to come out of Gun-nut Nation to promote guns?  It comes from a guy in Philadelphia, part hip-hop artist, part activist, part internet shyster and the founder of something called Black Guns Matter, which appears to be a website that sells – what else? – shirts, hoodies, hats, all the usual crap.

              The founder of this internet clothing boutique, Maj Toure, says that he’s promoting a ‘Solutionary Lifestyle’ which allows his group to “educate people in urban communities in all 50 states on their 2nd amendment rights and responsibilities through firearms training and education.”

              Along with his t-shirt shop, Toure has also tried to build a political career. The only problem is that even though he ran for an at-large seat in the Philadelphia City Council, running on the Libertarian line, he received one-half of one percent of the vote. Uhhh, he lost. He then got booted out of the Libertarian Party. So what?

              Toure appeared at the 2019 CPAC meeting and told the audience that he supported grass-roots movements against racism but that he didn’t like BLM because all they were doing was raising money for Democratic candidates and Democrats are, to put it bluntly, no good.

              Now Toure’s back at CPAC again at their 2021 CPAC meeting which was held in Texas this past weekend.  This time around, he talked about how gun control equals racism and since he’s opposed to racism, he’s going to fight against gun control.

              Spieling about how liberals are all racists if they support gun control has now landed Toure an occasional appearance on Fox News, where he challenges the Brothers and Sisters about guns, politics, and race. And better yet, he has raised over $400,000 on GoFundMe to support what he claims will be “a 50 state tour to continue informing urban communities–especially youth–about safe and legal firearms knowledge, conflict resolution, and the 2nd amendment.” Conflict resolution using a gun? That’s a good one.

            I’m going to start an organization called Liberals Against Gun Control, or LAGC. I’m going to put up a website, get a 501c3 designation from the IRS, hire a PR firm to book me on all the alt-right media channels and start getting ready to be interviewed on Fox News.

            There’s no question that I’ll get plenty of help from the liberal media which is always looking for a story about how guns attract people who shouldn’t be interested in guns. Last week the Washington Post ran a story about anti-gun Americans who are now buying guns which featured an interview with a couple of Black women who now own Glocks and AR-15’s. The story referenced a story about gun sales in The New York Times. The fact that the NYT story doubled the number of guns actually purchased last year, oh well, oh well.

            The more I think about it, the more I’m going to start my own gun-owning group. And I’m not just going to call it Liberals Against Gun Control, I’m going to call it Jewish Liberals Against Gun Control. There have to be at least three other Jews in the United States besides me who are against the Biden Administration’s effort to take away all our guns. And don’t forget that what happened to all the Jews in Nazi Germany after Hitler took away their guns.

            Could that happen here? Of course it could happen here!  Look at the 2020 election – stolen right out from under our noses. This sh*t has to stop!  Has to stop – right now!!

            Gotta come up with a logo for my new group. After all, I need a logo for my t-shirts and coffee cups that I’ll carry in my online store. Maybe I’ll put an AR-15 inside a Star of David. That’ll work.  How this?

              Perfect. Just perfect.  I’ll send it out right now to the t-shirt company. I’ll use the same outfit that Trump used to produce all his MAGA crap.

              America’s a wonderful country. Start something from nothing which means nothing and will do nothing and you can still make yourself a million bucks.

Florida, The ‘Gunshine. State, Shines Again!

July 9, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , 2 Comments

              It seems like a million years ago but the date was actually February 14, 2018 when a 19-year old kid walked into the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida with his AR-15 and shot the place up. The final toll was 17 dead and another 17 injured, and the shooter is going to face 17 murder and 17 attempted murder counts when his trial finally takes place in September of this year.

              After the massacre, Trump went on TV and here’s a bit of what he said: “We must also work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections and that turns classmates and colleagues into friends and neighbors.”

              Trump was concerned about the ‘dignity’ of life? Trump was worried about ‘deep and meaningful human connections?’ Give me a break. Oh well, the good news is that he’s gone. Anyway.

              Right after the shooting, the Florida Legislature quickly passed a new law, the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which bars anyone under the age of 21 from buying a long gun – Federal law already prohibits anyone under 21 from buying a handgun. Given that this was Florida, the ‘gunshine state,’ the law also created a new program, School Guardians, who are volunteers trained to patrol schools and carry guns.

              Two weeks ago, a District Court Judge upheld the law but yesterday the NRA announced they would appeal the case and try to get the judge’s ruling overturned, in particular, the prohibition against anyone owning a long gun who is not yet 21.

              “There is no question that 18-to-21-year-olds are adults in the eyes of the law and the Constitution,” says the NRA’s Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer. “To deny those younger adults their rights because of the actions of criminals is nothing less than political discrimination.”

              Good old Granny Hammer. Here she is, all 81-years old and she’s still running around the State Capitol in Tallahassee trying to get gun things done. I love how she knows ‘for a fact’ that the Constitution says that 18-year-olds are adults. Which Constitution is she talking about?

              When it comes to gun laws, Florida is really in a class all by itself. Back in 1987, the state passed a law which prohibited localities from passing any gun law that is different from statewide law. They went back in 2011 and changed the law so that any local official who passes a local gun ordnance that pre-empts a state law will lose his job.

              The best gun law in Florida was actually a law that didn’t become a law. It was a bill filed by Idiot Number Two, Matt Gaetz, (Idiot Number One is Marjorie Taylor Greene) when he was a State Senator. The bill never got out of committee, even though it was a legislative committee chaired by Gaetz. The bill would have allowed people who were shot to sue the owner of a facility if the shooting took place in a gun-free zone.

              Maybe Gaetz figures that when Granny Hammer finally retires, that he can become the NRA’s lobbyist in Florida. Of course, it will be a little tough for him to buttonhole legislatures in the State House if he’s sitting in jail. Oh well, oh well.

              I don’t think the NRA really gives one rat’s damn about whether anyone in Florida who is 18 should be able to own an AR-15. What I think their challenge to the Florida gun law really represents is that life is slowly but (hopefully) returning to normal after the ravages of Covid-19.

              Because when you stop and think about it, what could be more normal than the NRA leading the crusade to protect our 2nd-Amendment ‘rights?’

Will Andrew Cuomo End The Gun Business?

July 8, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 7 Comments

             

Yesterday Andy Cuomo signed a law that he hopes will help reduce gun violence in New York. When it comes to going after the gun industry, Andy is, without doubt, the strongest and most dedicated public official in the United States. He’s the guy who, in 1999, wrote the agreement that Smith & Wesson signed with the Clinton Administration that almost put S&W out of business.  In 2013, he rammed the SAFE ACT through the New York State Legislature which was the toughest gun-control law passed after Sandy Hook.
So now, in response to a startling increase in shootings in New York City, we now have another gun law in New York which responds to “the dangers to safety and health and creation of a public nuisance caused by the sale, manufacturing, distribution, importing and marketing of firearms.”

Basically, the law says that any dealer who sells a gun that winds up being used in an act of gun violence will not only be subject to legal sanctions imposed by the state government, but also can be sued by anyone who was damaged by someone else who assaulted them by using that gun. 

In other words, this law gets around the immunity from personal damages that the gun industry has enjoyed under the Federal PLCCA law and was specifically drafted to avoid being in conflict with the PLCCA law.

And by the way, the law clearly states that a dealer who sells a gun which ends up in the ‘wrong hands’ can be held responsible even if this dealer had absolutely no intention of using his business to sell any kind of illegal gun. If I were a dealer in New York State, I’d close my shop down by the end of this week.
And also by the way, the law isn’t just aimed (pardon the pun) at dealers who do business in New York State. It specifically says that anyone engaged in the business anywhere who sells a gun that is used to commit gun violence in New York State can be held liable under this law. Which means that if a dealer in, say, South Carolina, sells a gun to someone who then has the gun stolen and this gun somehow winds up being picked up by the cops in Brooklyn after a shooting of someone on Bushwick Avenue, the dealer in South Carolina can be sued because maybe he didn’t take proper precautions to make sure the gun would always be kept in a safe and proper way.
This new law won’t be on the books two weeks before the gun industry goes into court and tries to get the statute overturned. Because new laws have a way of spreading from state to state and if this version of the ‘Albany flu’ were to be copied in some other Communist state like California, or Illinois, or anywhere else where the blue team rears its ugly head – watch out!  Bye-bye guns.
Last week the Commies who rule the city of San Jose passed a law which requires gun-owning residents to carry liability insurance on their guns. The monies would be used to cover the costs of police response to shootings, medical costs of treating gun injuries and even the charges for carrying the wounded to a hospital and the dead victims to the morgue.
Why San Jose? Because recall that on May 26th a guy showed up at the city’s public transportation hub with his trusty assault rifle, shot and killed 9 people and then shot himself. 
Remember when every neighborhood had a drug store, a hardware store and even a clothing store? They’re all replaced by chains. What makes this New York State law a threat to the gun industry is the fact that guns are the only consumer item that are still sold in small, independent retail stores. And the owners of these stores don’t have money to hire lawyers if they get sued for selling a ‘crime’ gun. 
The New York State gun law could be the start of bye-bye American pie.
                 

Do We Need A New ATF Director?

July 7, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 4 Comments

When Gun-control Nation thinks about the organizations which promote guns, the first one that always comes to mind is the National Rifle Association because, after all, the NRA has been the group which has been leading the gun charge for more than one hundred years.

There’s also the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which runs Gun-nut Nation’s annual trade SHOT show.

The group whose activities really determine how the gun industry behaves, however, is a small and not-so-public group known as the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers, or NASGW. This outfit represents the 30 wholesalers who are responsible for selling and moving just about all the guns and ammunition made in America which wind up on the shelves of the retail stores that sell guns.

There isn’t a single gun-control advocate or a single gun-control researcher who is a member of the NASGW other than me. But why bother to learn anything about the industry that you want to regulate just because you want the industry to operate in a more responsible way?

Yesterday I received an email from the NASGW asking me to sign a letter opposing the nomination of David Chipman to head the ATF.  I received a similar email from the NRA, except the NASGW letter is going to be sent directly to Joe Manchin, whose vote on any issue before the Senate has now become the litmus test for what Joe Biden will get done and what he won’t get done.

Or to put it another way, what Joe Biden will do to wreck the United States. That’s the way that Biden is being described by Donald Trump. Remember Donald Trump? He used to be a tenant in a very nice apartment located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, D.C. Now he’s just a blowhard and a schmuck. Anyway…

So, the battle lines are forming over the Chipman vote, with all my friends in Gun-control Nation certainly hoping that his nomination will be approved. After all, this is a guy who retired from the ATF and then went to work for the gun-control gang! He’s still employed by Gabby Giffords, and he’s also said some nice things about Mayor Mike.  In other words, to quote Grandpa, he’s nisht gut – no good.

Leaving all the sturm und drang about Chipman aside, I still don’t understand what difference it makes who is Director of the ATF when it comes to reducing the 125,000 fatal and non-fatal injuries each year caused by the illegal or inappropriate use of guns. This is because I have yet to understand the connection between a bunch of overpaid clerks who wander into a gun shop and spend a couple of weeks making sure that every piece of paperwork is filled out exactly right and the decision by roughly 7% of the guys who try to kick the sh*t out of someone else and do it by using a gun.

The ATF would like to consider itself a federal law enforcement agency on a par with the DEA and the FBI. It’s not. It’s job and most of its budget is used either to provide technical services to other agencies or to pay these so-called Industry Operations Investigators who first must spend 10 weeks becoming “experts in firearms and explosives federal laws and regulations.” They are also trained to “analyze trends and recognize patterns of trafficking and diversion schemes.”

There’s only one little problem with all this training going on at the ATF. When it comes to guns, there doesn’t happen to be any Federal law which either defines or tries to prevent gun trafficking. In fact, Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is the latest in a long line of Members of Congress who have introduced gun-trafficking bills over the last few years. Know where these bills end up? Three guesses and none of them count.

I like David Chipman and I hope his nomination goes through. But If all he’s going to do is manage a government agency which is responsible for enforcing a law that doesn’t exist, to quote Grandpa again, gai gezinta hai (read: who cares?)

Celebrate The 4th – Shoot Someone With A Gun!

July 6, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 4 Comments

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the good residents of the city of Chicago have found the perfect way to celebrate America’s birthday, which is to get out there with their guns in the streets of the Windy City and mow everyone down. 

After all, what’s more uniquely American than the 2nd Amendment? And the 2nd Amendment says that every red-blooded American is entitled to own a gun.

 And by the way, the 2nd Amendment doesn’t say that I have to possess a license to own a gun. It also doesn’t say I have to be of a certain age to own a gun. So why is everyone always making such a big deal about ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ guns?

I think we need more, not less Americans to behave on July 4th the way that Chicago behaved on America’s birthday when 17 people were killed and another 87 were wounded with guns.

And don’t think there wasn’t plenty of competition from other cities whose residents decided to celebrate July 4th in this same, uniquely American way.

In Cincinnati, two teens shot each other dead and three other teens were wounded when an argument between two kids turned into a gunfight because they both were carrying guns. In New York City, the weekend shooting toll was at least 25 victims. All in all, the holiday weekend running from July 2nd through July 4th may have produced 500 shooting victims countrywide, including at least 145 who ended up dead.

Every year the TV news always starts its coverage of the July 4th celebration by talking about the crush in airports and on highways because the ‘holiday travel’ story is a demonstration that the country is alive and well. It was particularly an important story this year because it was a reminder again of how we are finally getting out from under Covid-19.

But maybe next year the media might want to consider starting off the holiday weekend coverage with a screenshot of a couple of kids cleaning and loading their guns or shooting at some old tin cans in the back yard. And then the story can always bring in some idiot who brags about how he never leaves home without his gun because he has the God-given ‘right’ to defend himself from all those ‘thugs’ in the street.

Now that the weekend has ended, we will for sure be treated to the other notable American tradition, which will be a noisy argument about what kind of laws we should pass to keep Americans from killing each other in this uniquely-American way. Other countries don’t share this tradition because they already have laws that keep guns not just out of the ‘wrong’ hands but out of everyone’s hands.

Incidentally, the numbers I stated above about how 145 out of 500 shooting victims died over the weekend has to be a serious undercount of the total who got shot. There’s simply no way that the guys who banged away this weekend have practiced enough to kill only one out of three persons who got shot.  I’m willing to bet that the overall holiday shooting toll will be more like 700 or 800 victims, if only that.

For those among you who are concerned about this penchant we seem to have for killing each other with such abandon and evident delight, is that the July 4th holiday only comes once a year. Which means that beginning next weekend, the number of people who get killed and wounded with guns can drift back down to 300 gun murders and assaults – the normal weekend rate.

In 2019, less than 4% of all the victims of gun violence were under 14 years old. The reports from this past weekend, however, seem to indicate that younger kids are now engaged in gun violence both as victims and shooters of guns.

There’s nothing like getting the next generation ready to share in a traditional way of life, right?

Gun Violence | TeeTee Press

The Militia Threat Is Real – So Is My F-15.

July 4, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 7 Comments

              Sooner or later, I knew it was going to happen. The liberal media would wake up to the fact that the so-called militia ‘movement’ isn’t just a bunch of fat, old White guys eating some pizza, drinking some beer, and then romping around in the woods with their guns.

              Yesterday, the Massachusetts State Police chased a bunch of heavily-armed men into a wooded area on I-95 about 10 miles north of Boston. The highway was closed down, the SWAT teams showed up, the negotiations went back and forth, and the insurrectionists finally gave up. No shots were fired, nobody was hurt.

              The group turned out to be members of something called the Rise of the Moors, an outfit in Rhode Island which has, of course, the usual website and professes to be part of the Nation of Moorish-Americans who do not believe that they are citizens of the United States. Hence, they do no feel obligated to obey American laws, or pay American taxes, or submit to American sovereignty in any other way.

              Why were a bunch of these self-proclaimed separatists sitting on the shoulder of I-95 in Wakefield, MA filling up one of the vehicles in their caravan with gas? Because they were on their way to Maine for ‘training,’ whatever that means. Give me a break.

              What did the liberal media do as soon as this story made the news?  They called up the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, both organizations immediately characterizing the Rise of the Moors as an ‘extremist movement.’ I mean, what else is the ADL going to say? The last movement that the SPLC or the ADL investigated that wasn’t an ‘extremist movement’ was the Boy Scouts, and even then, they weren’t completely sure.

              If there’s one legacy which has come out of the Trump years and refuses to go away, it’s the idea that all you have to do is let some idiots walk around with assault rifles who say they are protecting us from the ‘tyranny’ of the Deep State, and you have proof that the militia movement is here to stay and getting worse every day. One of the really accomplished liberal journalists, Lucian Truscott (who should know better) just put up a piece on Salon in which he claims that the GOP has shifted so far to the Right that the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers are the party’s base.

              And what do these groups all share in common? They all call themselves ‘militias’ and they all love to strut around showing off their guns. Don’t forget – they have military commanders like General Roger Stone getting them in line for the next charge up San Juan – oops! – I mean Capitol Hill.

              I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of what happened on January 6th. But I really think that our man Joe is correct when he says that if you want to take on the American government, you’d better have something more than an AR-15, like maybe an F-15, okay?

              The day after he made that comment some idiots on a Facebook gun group to which I belong began telling each other that they knew some guy who owned his own F-15. When I mentioned that a 30-foor, cigar-shaped aluminum cylinder with wings but without avionics or weapons is a replica and not a real warplane, I was denounced as just another anti-gun liberal who’s on the payroll of the Deep State. Which, since I conduct lethal-force certifications for federal law-enforcement agencies, happens to be true.

              I guess because I sold maybe 100 or more assault rifles in my gun shop between 2001 and 2015, I just can’t find myself getting all worked up about the ‘threat’ posed by either the home-grown protectors of the Constitution indicted after January 6th, or by the followers of Sharia law arrested in Wakefield yesterday.

              I’ve actually attended a couple of militia ‘training’ sessions out in the woods. The pizza was still warm, and the beer was cold.

Older Entries Newer Entries