Category: Anti-Gun Nannies

Oppression By Bureaucracy

Anti-Gun Nannies, Foreign Affairs, Rights, Shootin' Time, The Gun Thing

It’s not often I get an email that creates both sadness and almost-ungovernable rage, but Reader Bruce sent me this:

Last week, on one of the saddest days of my life, I went to a local police station and handed over my three rifles for destruction by the “Commissioner of Police”.

They were nothing special: a B/A Savage 320D in .22 Hornet; an Anschutz .22RF 1451 Sporter (with custom fibreglass stock); a Savage Model 12 .223 Varmint heavy barrel (in a custom fibreglass stock). But they were MINE! to me, they represented something: that society had accepted me as a responsible human being. I obsessively hand loaded for the Hornet and .223, seeking the best performance each was capable of.

So why did I do the unthinkable?

Firstly, my wife and I “downsized”. We moved from a suburban 4 x 2 on a huge lot into a 3 x 2 apartment close to the river. And then came the first cruncher. By law, my firearms had to be kept in an approved gun safe, bolted into brick or concrete on two surfaces. And the only place for that in our new abode was in the lock-up roller door garage. Uh-uh … the law says it has to “be under the main roof” … and it isn’t. My safe was “grandfathered” anyway. Had I bought another firearm or had one of mine rebarrelled, I would have been compelled to buy a new “approved” and vastly more expensive safe. So I had nowhere to store my guns (or ammo, for that matter).

Secondly, I have been a competitive target shooter for 51 years, from air pistol to pistol to full-bore to rimfire. I am nationally qualified as a Range Officer. I was, until I let it lapse, a qualified Commonwealth Shooting Coach. I have been able to use my rifles competitively and for hunting, quite legally. Not so now. If I want to use them competitively, I have to get “another” licence category for them, and compete a regulated number of times per year. Once they are so classified, I can no longer use them for hunting or vermin control. The reason? Our the Minister for Police declared that target firearms are likely to have lightened triggers and are not “safe” to use off a range.

My dilemma. Give up plinking or bunny busting or fox shooting, or give up competition. OK, so I’ll just use them for the former and forego competition. Problem. I can only shoot on “approved” properties. My friend has a farm. I can shoot there, provided he registers me every year on an internet portal with the police department. If his neighbour wants me to shoot a few foxes on his property, I am not allowed to unless he also registers me electronically. Oh, and calibres are limited by the size of the property you have permission to shoot on.

And so I handed them in. I have owned a firearm (or more than one) since 1967. I’m pleased to say I’ve never done anything dangerous or even vaguely illegal with any of them. And to now be told that I can’t have them unless I jump through bureaucratic hoops hurts. Deeply.

My point? DON’T GIVE YOURS UP! Fight the bastards until you can fight no longer.

Note that gun ownership can be ended simply by incremental “reasonable” gun control regulation — e.g. guns must be stored in a safe —–> safes must be encased in brick walls (an almost impossible condition to meet for most people, which is the point of such bastardy).

Bruce, my friend:  if you ever make it to Texas, I’ll organize a Schutzenfest for you with some of my fellow Texans, at a place where we can bang away all day without fear or apprehension.  As for guns… let’s just say you’d be overwhelmed by choice.

Step Up To The Plate, Mr. President

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

A lot of the time, politics is all about action:  doing things that will make a difference, one hopes with a positive or good outcome.

But a positive or good outcome can also come from doing nothing, as Jenny Sensiba points out:

ATF just took a big hit in federal court. U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix has ruled in Jensen v. ATF that the government can no longer enforce the National Firearms Act registry for things like suppressors and short-barreled rifles.

The legal logic is pretty straightforward, even in a world where case law often treats the Second Amendment like a second-class right. Last year, Congress zeroed out the $200 transfer tax in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Back in 1937, the Supreme Court only allowed the National Firearms Act to exist because it was a tax framework, barely keeping it within the theoretical powers of Congress.

With the tax now gone, the constitutional justification that anti-gun courts have had for fingerprinting you and making you wait months for a piece of paper is no longer there, leaving the court with no choice but to rule the NFA unconstitutional.

Don’t go out and assemble that SBR yet, though. Judge Hendrix put a seven-day hold on his ruling so the Department of Justice can appeal. And the ruling will only apply to the plaintiffs and their members.

But, here’s the part you might not know: The DOJ doesn’t actually have to defend the NFA. They’re under no obligation at all to appeal the ruling.

And as Sensiba points out:

Sure, career government lawyers usually file appeals automatically to defend federal laws. They see it as their job. But, the DOJ is part of the executive branch, and President Trump is the guy at the top. He’s the one who signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law that zeroed out the tax in the first place. Just as President Obama chose to have his DOJ decline to defend laws banning gay marriage, Trump can just as easily leave the NFA out in the legal cold and let it starve to death.

All it takes is one phone call to the [now confirmed] Attorney General telling the DOJ to stand down and decline to appeal.

With this satisfactory outcome:

In a week, if you’re a member or customer of one of the plaintiffs, you can order a suppressor or build that SBR or SBS. In two months, the ruling will become permanent and future administrations can’t appeal.

I guess now we’ll see whether DJT actually does believe in the Second Amendment — part of that pesky Constitution thing he swore to uphold and defend, twice.  Just one email (a phone call doesn’t cut it) to the DoJ to say:  “Stand back and do nothing.”  (One thought:  if our new USAG is the man Trump has suggested he is, he wouldn’t need any assistance from POTUS — that would be an even better outcome.)

Of course, there’s going to be weeping and wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from the Usual Suspects in the Gun Control Industry.  But hell, every time Trump does anything, there’s weeping and wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from some bunch of Lefties or other — so why should this be any different?

It’s time to get the “F” out of the ATF.

Quote Of The Day

Anti-Gun Nannies, QOTD, The Gun Thing

From these guys, talking about the response of Virginians to the latest round of socialist-inspired gun restrictions:

“When government signals that it wants to restrict a constitutional right, people often become more determined to exercise it.”

Which is what happened in Virginia.  Somewhere out there, I can hear the chuckles of native Virginians Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

Sorry, No

Anti-Gun Nannies

I know that Insty probably doesn’t have much control over the linkages on his site, but really:

Given that Levi Strauss is a bunch of rabid gun confiscators and anti-Second Amendment assholes, I’m a little surprised that he would allow this garbage on his website.

But hey, money talks.

As much as I love the man and want to support him, though, I draw the line at following this link.  They could give their poxy 501 jeans away for free, and I still wouldn’t want anything to do with them.

Reaction

Anti-Gun Nannies, The Gun Thing

It is a well-known fact of sales and advertising is that if you want to create demand for a product, you show it, extol its features and wonders, and then say, “…but you can’t have it.”

I have a similar reaction to a product when someone might want to prevent me from owning it:  I get one.

Longtime Readers will be only too familiar with my attitude towards the AR-15 poodleshooter and its varmint ammo — the executive summary would be that I despise the frigging things.

However, the more that the anti-gun brigade wants to ban them as eeeevil assault rifles (“only the military”, “designed not to hunt but to kill humans” etc. etc. etc.), the more I think that every American citizen should own one (or more, as the urge takes).

Which is a long way of saying that I am really, really glad that I now have one:  not because of any love I may have for the thing, but because now that I own one, I’m never going to give it up to any government agency, no matter what laws or restrictions the government may pass to make them illegal.

Were the Nanny Hoplophobe Set not so keen on banning them, I wouldn’t own one in a month of Sundays, because let’s just say that I might happen to have alternatives that I would consider far more effective in the AR-15’s purpose.

But regardless, I’m glad that I have a poodleshooter… simply because some asshole doesn’t want me to own one.

And it appears that as many as 15 million Americans feel the same way that I do — and very many likely for the same reason.

So while news items like this are very welcome, we sure as hell don’t need to have some super-lawyers (e.g. the USSC) explain the Second Amendment to us.  We know what it means, regardless of what they think or how carefully they may parse penumbral meanings out of the Constitution.

As for the would-be gun-banning types:  FOAD.

Weapons-Grade Stupidity

Anti-Gun Nannies

…and no, this isn’t a dig against the .dotmil.  But you have to admit that this kind of stupidity is kinda different — an upgrade, if you will — from just the usual Congressional idiocy:

Pennsylvania state Rep. and former Democratic Party Vice-Chair Malcolm Kenyatta pushed a ban on “military-grade weapons” after the handgun/shotgun attack that occurred at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD).

Yeah, by all means let’s ban include pump-action shotguns and handguns in the category of “military-grade weapons” (whatever that means) — because after all, the military does use them, right?

Sheesh, when clowns like this can be elevated to the position of Democrat Party Vice-Chair, what does that say for the people who couldn’t make the grade?  And to use a sporting term, how deep is their bench of quality politicians?

Simple answer, of course, is that the current Democrat Party has no bench;  their talent pool, which may once have contained intelligent men like Tip O’Neill and Sam Rayburn have all been driven out of the party leadership in favor of vacuous idiots like AOC and larcenous malcontents like Ilhan Omar, all by the hard Marxists who are now the nomenklatura of the Party Of Jefferson — who by now would have used a handgun on pretty much all of them if he could see what they’ve done to it.

As for this moron Kenyatta, he’s just trying to leverage any opportunity to get guns out of the hands of citizens.  At least he’s behaving quite like his namesake, who was also an Afro-Socialist.