Tag Archives: guns

Guns To The Rescue?

15 Friday May 2020

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We know that guns deter ordinary thug criminals or render them harmless. Now, in Michigan, it may just be that they are serving their original purpose: deterring tyranny.

Michigan closed down its capitol in Lansing on Thursday and canceled its legislative session rather than face the possibility of an armed protest and death threats against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

The gathering, meant to advocate opening the state for business despite the coronavirus pandemic, followed one April 30 that resulted in pictures of protesters clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns crowding the statehouse. They confronted police and taunted lawmakers.

It was always this easy. Make them feel the fear they’d have us all live in. Let this spread to all levels of government and everywhere around the land! Keep ’em honest.

Background Checks Like We’ve Never Had Before

08 Thursday Aug 2019

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Let me tell you. Yuge.

President Donald Trump endorsed an expansion of background checks for U.S. gun buyers following the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, but said there’s “no political appetite” to renew a ban on military-style rifles.

“I’m looking to do background checks,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Wednesday to visit the two violence-stricken cities. “I think background checks are important.”

While he said there’s not enough support in Congress to re-enact what was commonly known as the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, he indicated he would discuss the idea with lawmakers. “I will certainly bring that up,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused so far to allow a vote on House-passed legislation that would expand background checks and hasn’t indicated whether he’s reconsidering after the shootings, which killed at least 31 people.

“I think we can bring up background checks like we’ve never had before,” Trump said.

I have a suggestion like we’ve never had before: two steps for a check. First, check and see if the Second Amendment is still there. It is, so on to step two – is the gun customer an “American” pursuant to the definition at or around the time the 2A was ratified. If so, proceed with the sale. If not, deport.

Guns in School: a Mark of Civilized Society

18 Thursday Jul 2019

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Dr. Walter Williams and many others have written about this very subject before. It bears repeating.

Here’s a suggestion. How about setting up some high school rifle clubs? Students would bring their own rifles to school, store them with the team coach and, after classes, collect them for practice. You say: “Williams, you must be crazy! To prevent gun violence, we must do all we can to keep guns out of the hands of kids.”

There’s a problem with this reasoning. Prior to the 1960s, many public high schools had shooting clubs. In New York City, shooting clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. Students carried their rifles to school on the subway and turned them over to their homeroom or gym teacher. Rifles were retrieved after school for target practice. In some rural areas across the nation, there was a long tradition of high school students hunting before classes and storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars, parked on school grounds, during the school day.

High school rifles: more elegant weapons from a more civilized age. No changes whatsoever…

Of Course…

21 Sunday Apr 2019

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The first, notable, nameable arrest along Amerika’s porous Southern border was of the leader of a group of patriots who do the job the government won’t.

The FBI on Saturday said it had arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico.

The arrest came two days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the group of illegally detaining migrants and New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered an investigation.

Hopkins, 69, also known as Johnny Horton, was arrested in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on a federal complaint charging him with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

“We’re not worried about it, he’s going to be cleared,” said Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), blaming his arrest on political pressure from Lujan Grisham.

Even with a national emergency (heretofore with NO emergency action), we can’t halt the migratory flow but we can persecute our own. Hey, Donald! You’re doing it wrong. Ask Nancy and AOC. This guy’s okay. This is a man whom most Democrats wouldn’t mind voting. That is if he really is a convicted felon.

I hope he’s released within 20 days. He’s just an unaccompanied “minor” and “refugee” of the documented variety. No felon is illegal – unless enforcing the law is illegal.

This is one of the reasons why we have the Second Amendment.

Gun Ban Bans Sales

12 Tuesday Mar 2019

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The demise of Dick’s Sporting Bads is taking a little longer than I expected though it is progressing.

Since then sales at Dick’s have declined, despite a strong U.S. economy and consumer spending, Mr. Stack has blamed much of the decline on its stance on guns, saying some gun enthusiasts have stopped shopping at the chain.

For the fiscal year ended Feb. 2, same-store sales fell 3.1%. The company said it expects comparable sales to be flat to up to 2% this fiscal year. Dick’s predicted same-store sales will return to growth in the second quarter, but also set annual earnings targets that were below Wall Street’s forecasts.

Dick’s stock fell 9% to $35.24 in morning trading as the broader market was slightly higher. The stock had rallied about 25% since the start of the year.

Down, down, and away!

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Yeah, We Know That

25 Friday Jan 2019

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The government admits gun control doesn’t work.

It took the United States government’s Department of Justice an entire study dedicated to gun use and criminals to figure out what logical human beings have already understood for decades. The result of their own study found that gun control laws will never work because criminals will never use legal channels to obtain guns.

According to Fox 5, the findings based on the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI), discovered that about 1 in 5 or 21% of all state and federal prisoners reported they had “possessed or carried a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison.” The survey released by the DOJ this month declared that criminals unsurprisingly rely on the black market for their guns.

Now, if they’ll just admit they don’t work either and go away…

Just What, Exactly, Is Conserved Here?

18 Tuesday Dec 2018

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Ann Coulter’s bet is still out there waiting for a taker: will Trump cave on the budget and the wall (again)? It certainly looks like it.

The White House suggested Tuesday that President Donald Trump could back down from his demand for $5 billion to fund his proposed border wall in a year-end spending bill.

Trump’s push for the money has threatened a partial government shutdown when funding for seven agencies lapses after midnight Friday. Last week, the president said he would be “proud” to close parts of the government over border security.

“We have other ways that we can get to that $5 billion that we’ll work with Congress,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News on Tuesday morning. She added that the Trump administration could support $1.6 billion in border security funding proposed by Senate Democrats, as long as it can “couple that with other funding resources” to get to $5 billion.

We wait. And, even if there is a partial shutdown, those “essential” personnel will still keep working. One wonders if the ATF is essential because the agents will be needed ASAP to enforce Trump’s ban on bump stocks.

The Trump administration moved Tuesday to officially ban bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like automatic firearms, and has made them illegal to possess beginning in late March.

The devices will be banned under a federal law that prohibits machine guns, according to a senior Justice Department official.

I feel a little foolish, now, about running those pro-Trump 2A articles at FP a few years ago.

No border security, no deportations, no repelling actual invasion, no sound budgeting, and no respect for the Second Amendment. Thank you, queen Hillary.

This new regulation is, of course, unconstitutional. But, it will stand – Ivanka’s tears can reach the Supreme Court if needed.

Be mindful that the same regulatory logic, under different laws, could be used – in one stroke of the Presidential pen – to ban aliens, gun control, and debt. All debt-holders must either destroy their debt instruments or else turn them into the Treasury for immediate destruction. All debt is now illegal. It’ll not happen though it could.

Conservative friends, the old Trump Train can’t make it far from the station if the tracks are destroyed.

A List to Scrutinize

17 Monday Dec 2018

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This article has a veritable list of companies of which to be wary; look at them:

Smaller players largely have sidestepped scrutiny about their products or their financing because activists have mostly focused on pressuring big retailers and gun makers with publicly traded stock or debt held by mutual funds. Excluding the big three, there were 28 companies that made 10,000 or more rifles in 2016, up from 20 companies in 2011, according to ATF data.

“The number of manufacturers was shocking to me,” said Christopher Ailman, chief investment officer for the $219 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement system, which this fall started a new effort to press gun makers and retailers on safety.

Surging sales of assault-style rifles under the Obama administration paved the way for smaller gun makers to enter the market. Larger manufacturers have in recent years had trouble meeting a spike in demand for rifles like the semi-automatic AR-15, leaving room for Anderson and others, said Stefanie Zanders, chief operating officer of gun distributor Zanders Sporting Goods in Illinois.

“The ARs just took off, and some manufacturers couldn’t keep up,” she said in a telephone interview.

Overall, rifles accounted for 2.7 percent of the weapons used on U.S. murder victims in 2017, FBI data show. But assault-style rifles are at the center of America’s gun-policy debate because they have been used in deadly mass shootings, including last year’s sniper attack that killed 58 at a Las Vegas music festival.

No. Not the gun makers. Look at the banks, funds, and other meddling corporations, ready to squash the 2A and your other freedoms. It’s amusing that some of the biggest players, accustomed to heavy-handing larger manufacturers via their investment strategies, are at a total loss as to how to handle small, private firms.

Also, per stats I’ve used before, this piece shows (again) that ALL rifles account for a minuscule percentage of criminal activity – way behind bats, fists, and feet.

These would-be gun grabbing companies are anti-freedom and anti-American. Remember their names. (And there are plenty more).

Dick’s Sporting Goods: Shooting Their Business in the Foot

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

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They actually admit they’re (partially) to blame:

Comparable-store sales fell 4%, Dick’s said. Not adjusting for the 53rd week last year, the company’s same-store sales declined 1.9%.

The weaker-than-expected results bucked a trend in the retail sector, which largely has benefited from a surge in consumer spending fueled by a booming economy.

Consumer confidence for August, measured by the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index, was the highest its been in about 18 years. That sentiment, along with other factors, has powered companies such as Walmart Inc. WMT -0.42% and Target Corp. TGT +1.11% to their best quarterly results in more than a decade.

Dick’s said part of the company’s sales problems were a result of Under Armour’s decision to sell in more stores including Kohl’s.

Also hurting sales was Dick’s decision to tighten its policy on gun sales after 17 people were killed in a February shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school. The retailer halted sales of any firearms to people under age 21 at all of its 845 Dick’s and Field & Stream stores, and stopped selling assault-style weapons at Field & Stream.

Barring a course correction (and maybe an apology) we are headed towards my February prediction. (I told you [and them] so).

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