RKBA

Seems Obvious To Me

by

As anyone who has been interested in the debate over armed self defense knows, the vast majority of professional journalists have a deep seated bias against the very concept. Private citizens owning guns so they can protect their family and themselves? That path leads to chaos and death! Or so they seem to believe.

How are self defense advocates able to discern this? After all, most journalists insist that they are as unbiased as a person is able to be when discussing any subject under the Sun. And yet they repeatedly and consistently make the same mistakes when writing about the subject.

The laws concerning the ownership and use of weapons are usually ignored or misrepresented, the capabilities of firearms are almost always distorted, and the statistics indicating that private citizens who legally carry concealed firearms for their defense are the most peaceful and law abiding members of our society are rarely mentioned. And, most striking, these errors seem to go in only one direction. Data checking and being thorough about the facts seems to be important only if it advances the gun control agenda.

Read more

I Don’t Mind This Type of Spin

by

More revelations concerning the university professor who allegedly slaughtered some of her colleagues. (Hat tip to Ace.)

Seems she killed her brother with a shotgun 24 years ago, fled the scene of the crime after the death, and tried to carjack a passing motorist. It is tough to say if this is a true account, since police reports of the incident have been missing since 1988.

I worked for some years as a fingerprint technician for the local police force. Standard procedure was to keep all arrest records on hand until the person taken into custody died, and the death was verified via fingerprints taken from the corpse. Some of the cards were from before the First World War, and were the very first set of prints taken by the police.

fbi sample fingerprint card

Of course, I live in Columbus, Ohio. I have no idea what guidelines the cops in Alabama use. Something tells me that it is not all that different, though.

I found the following passage from the news article I linked to above to be interesting…

“After she left the room, the police said, she dumped the gun — for which she did not have a permit — in a second-floor bathroom.”

I’ve seen that mentioned in several news stories now. She did not have a permit! (“No permit! No permit!“) It seems the reporters writing these articles want to make sure that their readers know this.

In Alabama you don’t need a permit to purchase a firearm, only to carry a concealed handgun.

One of two things are happening here.

It could be that the journalists working on this story want to include the fact that the crime was premeditated, as the suspect cannot claim that she just forgot to leave her gun in the car when she came onto the university campus that morning. Not only is it illegal for someone in Alabama to carry a firearm on to school grounds, CCW permit or not, but it was illegal for the suspect to even carry a concealed handgun at all. This strongly indicates that she was planning this attack in advance.

The second possibility is that the reporters writing these news items hail from places with such draconian gun laws, that they simply cannot conceive of anywhere you can purchase and own a firearm without government permission. The fact that the suspect owned a gun at all when she didn’t have a license is a crime in their eyes.

Considering how much anti-gun bias I’ve encountered in the news over the past two decades, I’d have to say that the latter explanation is more credible than the former.

But, whatever their motivations, it turns out that they are actually doing a favor for those who advocate armed self defense. The suspect wasn’t one of us!

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Fundraising Bleg for Illinois 2nd Amendment Case

by

I post below the contents of a message that the Illinois State Rifle Association is sending to people on its email distribution list.

ALERT – Supreme Court Case on Chicago Handgun Ban

 
 
Yesterday the City of Chicago filed their brief in response in the US Supreme Court case brought by the Illinois State Rifle Association. The case, McDonald v Chicago, seeks to overturn Chicago’s handgun ban and punitive registration process.
 
This is the most important case in U.S. history concerning the Second Amendment and it is the ISRA’s case. Can state and local governments take away your Second Amendment Rights? Or is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms so fundamental that it is protected by being incorporated against the states through the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution? Without going into a bunch of legal language, Chicago’s brief is their attempt make sure that the handgun ban lives on.
 
These are the next steps in this case:
 
1. Our reply to what Chicago just submitted is due January 29.
 
2. Oral Arguments in the case have been scheduled for March 2.
 
3. The court is expected to deliver a decision near the end of June.
 
The outcome of this case is expected to affect the status of the Second Amendment across the nation. If we win, it does not mean that the fight is over, it means that next phase of the fight has begun.
 
The City of Chicago is using tax dollars pay for the defense in this case, in order to keep preventing its residents being able to have effective self-defense at home. Of course, no tax payer monies are being used to defend your Second Amendment rights! The legal effort behind the McDonald case is paid for privately.
 
The ISRA needs your support and your contributions to keep this case, and the inevitable follow-up cases, moving forward.
 
Now is the time. If you are an ISRA member, we need your continued support. Please make a donation on-line here, or over the phone at 815-635-3198. If you would like to mail or fax a donation, we have a printable form here [pdf].
 
Now is the time. If you’re not an ISRA member, join NOW and ride with us into history. You’ll be able to say “I was an ISRA member when WE overthrew the Chicago handgun ban and forever changed the gun control debate!” You can join on-line, or over the phone at 815-635-3198. You can download a printable application form here [pdf].
 
Post this alert to all internet blogs and bulletin boards to which you belong. Also, pass this alert on to your gun owning friends and fellow sporting club members. Ask them to forward this alert to their friend far and wide. Although the suit targets the local ordinance in Chicago, the implications of incorporation of the 2nd Amendment are national in scope.

(Note that I edited some of the links in the message to make them easier to use, but the content is unchanged.)

“You Got a License For That Toy?”

by

Some criminals in Australia are using toy guns to rob people.

Well, why not? Gun control laws in Australia are, to my American eyes, rather severe and draconian. Only about one-in-twenty people own guns for hunting or sport shooting. No one is allowed to carry concealed for self defense.

This means that there is pretty much no risk, either to the criminal or victim, if someone paints a toy gun black and uses it to hold someone up. The victim might get scared, but they are certainly in no danger from the gun. The criminal, on the other hand, is also operating without risk of getting shot by any law abiding citizen who is licensed to carry a concealed firearm. Which means this particular crime should prove to be extremely popular.

But that isn’t good enough for government in Australia. It seems that they are now planning on banning toy guns! There will be exceptions if those who want toy guns first get a license.

This paragraph blew my mind…

“NSW Police Minister Michael Daley said new national minimum standards affecting the possession, penalties and safe storage of imitation firearms were at a meeting in Perth yesterday.”

WTF? “…safe storage of imitation firearms…” Does that mean they are planning on locking people up if they don’t lock up their toys?

So what do you think the safe storage criteria would be for the slick, dangerous piece of hardware below?

Clown Gun

I know what you are thinking. The cops are worried about imitation or replica arms, stuff that can easily be mistaken for the real thing. The gun above looks like something a circus clown might use, and is not a serious example.

The only thing I can say in my defense is that the Australian government is beclowning themselves without any help from me.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

A Profoundly Depressing Book

by

I enjoy perusing bookstores and recently saw this book that caught my eye – The “SAS Urban Survival Handbook”. Readers of the blog know that the SAS are the British equivalent of the US special forces military units.

Since the book’s theme is intentionally downcast and “worst case” (i.e., urban survival) I was prepared for a list of disasters and potential bad things that could happen to you. The book spares no situations, focusing on getting attacked and what to do when everything goes awry.

Through the book they also offer “sensible” solutions to avoid getting in harms way in the first place, such as not frequenting dangerous areas and particularly for women and the elderly, who are likely to lose in a typical encounter with an angry urban male, to practically stay at home or only go out in groups. And why is this? Because no one is armed, so in Britain if something goes wrong and you are smaller or outnumbered you are in big trouble. There are certainly clubs (the mayor of London recently went after someone with an iron bar) and knives and similar-type weapons but no firearms.

Read more