RKBA

“Trump plan calls for nationwide concealed carry and an end to gun bans”

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The Washington Post:

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump — who said he has a concealed carry permit — called for the expansion of gun rights Friday, including making those permits applicable nationwide.
 
In a position paper published on his website Friday afternoon, Trump called for the elimination of gun and magazine bans, labeling them a “total failure.”
 
“Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own,” Trump wrote.

Where did this come from? Perhaps Trump’s people read this and similar articles from libertarians. Gun rights is a gimme issue for Trump. He can use it to get the support of libertarians, and of conservatives who lean libertarian, without alienating his other supporters.

It’s a pity that the other main Republican candidates are so inept by comparison in their use of modern media.

(Via The Right Coast.)

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sign of the times

(Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com.)

Unintended Consequences

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The Obama administration has directly or indirectly caused several gun-control panics beginning in late 2008. With each successive panic the high-water price level for popular weapons has declined, because manufacturers ramped up production in response to price incentives and because panic is difficult to sustain. There is more market competition and improved manufacturing technology, so supply and quality have improved despite executive orders curbing imports. In 2015 you can buy a US-made budget AR-15 from a good manufacturer for around $600. Back in the early ’90s when these panics started a similar gun would have cost $2k+ in more-expensive dollars.

Murderous US Gun Culture

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Bill Whittle is in great form here, showing how simplistic international murder-rate comparisons that fail to consider US cultural diversity are fatally flawed. (One quibble: Honduras isn’t a socialist country. However, this fact is irrelevant to Whittle’s argument.)

(Via Of Arms & the Law)

“Scottish referendum: A useful lesson in the limits of fiery activism”

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Janet Daley:

As it turned out, virtually all of the polling in recent weeks had been wrong. In the end, the vote wasn’t very close: it was a clear and decisive No. Whatever poll respondents had said or been afraid to say about their intentions because they felt coerced or intimidated by the aggressive tactics of the other camp, when it came to it, they were free to do as they pleased.
 
This is a salutary lesson in the limits of militant political activism: you can bully people in the street, shout them down at public meetings and dissuade them forcibly from displaying posters or banners you don’t like. You can, with the help of your friends and comrades, create what seems to you, inside the bubble of mutual congratulation, to be an unstoppable momentum.
 
But making people afraid to voice contrary opinions just reinforces the delusion into which political tribes so easily fall when they are waging war. And, even more dangerously, it leaves them utterly out of touch with the slow-burning resentment they are creating in the opponents they are so determined to crush. The inviolable privacy of the polling booth puts paid to all that: the ordinary citizen, who may well have had his anger and resolve strengthened under fire, gets his revenge.

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