News – The Arizona Rifleman

Breaking: FPC wins California assault weapons ban lawsuit

In 2019 the Firearms Policy Coalition filed a lawsuit, Miller v. Beccera, challenging California’s oppressive “assault weapons” ban.

Good news: as of today, they won the lawsuit.

Neutral news: the judge, Roger Benitez, issued a temporary 30 day stay of his order to give the state a chance to appeal.

Bad news: the state is almost certain to appeal.

If you’re not already a member of the FPC, now would be a good time to join and support such great work. The CRPA also is a perennial thorn in the side of the antis, and does other good works: you might as well join there too.

Newsom: “What the hell is wrong with us?”

Speaking today in the wake of the mass shooting in San Jose, California governor Newsom said, in part, “What the hell is wrong with us?” and “Wake up to this reality and take a little damn responsibility, all of us.”

I agree, but not in the way he hopes.

Rather, I wonder when the citizenry and politicians will recognize that gun control isn’t a viable solution, that it isn’t working, and so will actually start thinking about things that might work to reduce violent crime.

California regularly boasts about having some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, but seems to completely neglect the fact that criminals do not follow the law and that enforcing the law is, by nature, reactive in nature. The fact that they’re barely enforcing the laws they have on the books already doesn’t help with more run-of-the-mill crime either. Forcing ordinary, law-abiding citizens to be defenseless, surprise surprise, hasn’t stopped criminals from committing crimes (according to http://www.baggss.us/, in 2014 Santa Clara county had issued 104 CCW permits out of 1,781,642 people listed as being in the county in the 2010 census, with 1,396,807 being over 18, so CCW permits are as rare as hen’s teeth. Not to mention the VTA yard being a gun-free zone.).

For decades, California and several other states have been operating under the assumption that if they pass just one more law and make an already illegal action just a little bit more illegal then that action will stop. It hasn’t worked in California, and it hasn’t worked anywhere else in the country.

I wonder when those in positions of authority will — to use Newsom’s words — wake up to that reality, realize their approach doesn’t work and has resulted in a huge number of needless deaths, take a little damn responsibility responsibility, and try something different?

Predictions for today’s march

So, today is the March for Our Lives, the multi-city Bloomberg-funded gun control march. Here’s my predictions for today and the time following the march. Anyone want to bet on how many are true, or add their own predictions? Comment below!

Speeches and signs will condemn the NRA, gun owners, and pro-gun-rights politicians, accusing them of being complicit in the murder of innocents. The media will report this without question.
Accusations will be made that the NRA, gun owners, and pro-gun-rights politicians care more about guns than the lives of children.
Speeches and signs will accuse the NRA of being in the pocket of the gun industry, while this is demonstrably false. The media will report this without question.
People will claim that “nobody is going to take your guns” while speeches and signs will call for the banning and confiscation of broad classes of guns or all guns entirely. The media will not comment on this contradiction.
People will discuss how their “right not to be shot” outweighs the right of people to own guns.
The media will favorably compare the march to past civil rights protests. Nobody will mention that the proposals the marchers support reduce civil rights.
All public credit for organizing the march will be given to students, with no acknowledgement of the millions of dollars of funding given by Bloomberg, et al., or the behind-the-scenes planning, organizing, and coordinating done by his gun control groups.
Anti-gun-rights politicians will join in, to much public fanfare. Few of the marchers will recognize anyone other than Bernie Sanders.
Marchers and politicians will propose various anti-gun laws that wouldn’t have had any effect at preventing any of the recent mass shootings and they will claim such measures are “common sense”. They will be hailed in the media as heroes, and those who oppose them as being injurious to the rights of millions and ineffective at their stated goal will be vilified as monsters.
Many people will be quoted as saying “I support the Second Amendment, but…[list of gun control talking points]”
Claims that “this time something is different” will be made incessantly by the media, by protesters, etc. No (or weak) evidence will presented to back up that claim.
The protesters will leave behind substantial amounts of waste, garbage, and litter in their wake.
The vast majority of protesters will return to their homes feeling accomplished but otherwise take no further action; they will continue to vote for the politicians they were going to vote for anyway, maybe send a letter or two to their legislators, but then other things get in the way. Many students will head off to college in the next year or two, making it harder for them to coordinate. Some will be seen in the media for a few months, but ultimately will drop off the radar until the next mass shooting happens, at which point they’ll be trotted out in front of the cameras for their next 15 minutes of fame.
Some pro-gun-rights groups or individuals will stage laughably small, uncoordinated marches that will not accomplish anything. Some will be holding guns and generally make fools of themselves on the news.
Ultimately, little will change: some anti-gun-rights states will pass anti-gun-rights laws, some pro-gun-rights states will pass pro-gun-rights laws, maybe some minor things will happen (e.g. bump stock bans), and politicians will make various noises in public about wanting to do something. Regardless of what happens, lawsuits will be filed and pro- and anti-gun-rights groups will send out desperate pleas for money. The inertia of the status quo will prevent major changes.

Cancelling a Citibank card, buying gun stocks

Sebastian notes that Citibank is pushing some “common-sense” measures like requiring all gun-related “clients who offer credit cards backed by Citigroup or borrow money, use banking services or raise capital” to raise the required age for buyers to 21, not sell bump stocks or Magazines of ~~Unusual~~Normal Size, or sell to buyers who haven’t passed a background check (clearly they’re not familiar with federal law).

My wife has a Citibank card. We will be cancelling it immediately. We have other credit cards at banks that are at the very least gun-neutral, so this doesn’t affect our day-to-day spending at all other than not supporting Citi at all.

Update: my wife was one step ahead of me, and had already cancelled the card. Excellent.

I’ve also made the choice to buy some shares in publicly-traded gun-related stocks, specifically Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Vista Outdoors (owners of Federal Premium Ammunition). It’s not a huge investment, only a few hundred bucks in total and a small fraction of my well-balanced portfolio, and I don’t think such investments will get me rich, but it makes me a voting shareholder which is nice. I mainly invest in index funds that, as part of their index tracking, own such shares, but I wanted to explicitly own those individual shares in addition to the index funds.

NPR: “Science Provides Few Facts On Effects Of Gun Policies, Report Finds”

This article from NPR is interesting, as it refers to a recent study from the RAND Corporation (rather than some gun-control think tank) about what gun policies actually work to reduce violent crime.

The article can be summed up by the line, “The nonprofit RAND Corporation analyzed thousands of studies and found only 63 that establish a causal relationship between specific gun policies and outcomes such as reductions in homicide and suicide.”

Let’s go through the meat of the article:

“Most of the effects that we were looking for evidence on, we didn’t find any evidence,” says Andrew Morral, a behavioral scientist at RAND and the leader of the project.

This isn’t surprising: in general, criminals don’t follow laws, so gun control means little to them.

They found, for example, no clear evidence regarding the effects of any gun policies on hunting and recreational gun use, or on officer-involved shootings, or on mass shootings or on the defensive use of guns by civilians.

Again, not particularly surprising: most gun laws don’t seek to restrict hunting (other than basic things like hunting season times, restrictions on certain prey, etc.) or recreational gun use.

Officer-involved shootings and defensive gun uses by civilians (note: police officers are also civilians) are usually explicitly permitted by law in life-threatening situations, so I don’t really see the relevance.

The point about mass shootings isn’t unexpected: mass shooters tend to plan their attacks meticulously for a long period of time and are very detail-focused. All the “common sense gun laws” like waiting periods, background checks, etc. wouldn’t have any effect on someone willing to plan and wait as needed.

There were some categories with better data, however, Morral says. There is relatively strong evidence, for example, that policies meant to prevent children from getting access to firearms — such as laws that require guns to be stored unloaded, or in locked containers — reduce both suicide and unintentional injury and death.

Makes sense. Leaving loaded guns lying openly around the house when there’s kids or irresponsible adults around is an invitation to disaster. Fortunately, this is quite rare.

Guns should be secured when not under the immediate control of the owner.

Previous work has also found that places that require a permit (issued by law enforcement) for the purchase a firearm do reduce violent crime.

This surprised me a bit, but I’m curious how that works out: I suspect that criminals of any sort don’t end up getting permits, and that permit holders don’t commit much crime.

[a few minutes elapse as I read the linked study, available as a PDF]

Ok, the study basically says that if a state requires permits to purchase a gun, guns are less likely to end up being diverted to criminals. I wonder how much of this is psychological, in that the would-be straw purchaser is a bit more concerned that their name and fingerprints are “in the system” once they get a permit, even though their information is kept on the Form 4473 during a retail purchase anyway. Either way, permits should never be required for a constitutionally-protected right.

There is also some evidence that prohibitions against purchase by people who have been diagnosed with mental illness reduce violent crime, and that “stand your ground” laws, which allow citizens who feel threatened in public to use lethal force without retreating first, lead to an increase in violent crime.

As for mental health, that’s expected. As for stand your ground laws, the issue is not so much an increase in violent crime, as reported by NPR in this article, but an increase in homicides. How a homicide is classified — as a justifiable homicide, for example, or an unlawful homicide — is dependent on how police classify shootings. From an earlier NPR article on the topic, “Police guidelines likely vary from state to state, and police in different places may be interpreting shootings differently in light of stand your ground laws.”

Also interesting is the results of a survey of 95 gun policy experts “from across the political spectrum”, who they asked for their thoughts on effects of various policies including “universal background checks, bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, expanded mental illness prohibitions, minimum age requirements and required reporting of lost or stolen weapons”.

The vast majority of the specialists RAND surveyed agreed that the primary objectives of gun policies should be reducing suicides and homicides, and that protecting privacy, enabling hunting and sport shooting and preventing mass shootings were secondary priorities.

“That was a surprise, actually,” says Morral. “I think people on either side of gun policy debates think that the other side has misplaced values — or that it’s a values problem, in any case. But that’s not what we find. We find people prioritize the same things in the same order.”

However, those surveyed varied widely in their predictions about how different policies would affect each outcome.

“Where they disagree is on which laws will achieve those those objectives. So this is a disagreement about facts,” says Morral. “And the facts are sparse.”

So, no surprises there. Still, it’s an interesting study and I recommend you read it.

NPR asks “What’s The Potential Impact Of Gun Control Ideas Following South Florida Shooting?”

Answer: Pretty much nothing.

Adam Winkler, the UCLA professor they interviewed, essentially says, “There’s very little evidence that anything will work. Still, we must do something, and the low hanging fruit is bump stocks and universal background checks. It won’t do anything though.”

We’ve come a long way since I first got into gun rights activism 15 years ago when the NPR host, Alisa Chang, asks:

CHANG: You know, as we’re talking here, I’m reminded of sort of the ultimate argument often heard on the gun rights side, and that is, someone who is intent on murdering a lot of people can easily circumvent the law no matter what laws are passed. You’ve studied this for a very long time. What’s your take? Is it still worth it to try to come up with legislative solutions?

Did you get that? NPR is asking if it’s even worthwhile to even try to address this issue legislatively. I think they see the writing on the wall that gun control, even if it’s something they feel is the right thing to do (and it isn’t), is simply impossible.

Even Adam Winkler recognizes the futility of gun control, particularly in the context of standard-capacity magazines:

The difficult thing is that California, for instance, has banned the possession of high-capacity magazines. But initial reports from law enforcement were that virtually no one has turned theirs in even though there’s probably somewhere between 7 and 10 million high-capacity magazines in California.

Excellent. Well done, California gun owners. Civil disobedience is a wonderful thing.

We shouldn’t rest on our laurels, of course, particularly now, but it’s refreshing seeing things shift so much in just the time I’ve been involved with guns to the point that gun owners are basically saying “No more. Not another inch.” while gun control advocates are even wondering if they should bother with gun control laws at all.

Remember when?

FedEx evidently is sticking with the NRA, at least for now, in terms of offering its members discounts on shipping. That’s good, and I hope they continue to do so.

On the other hand, they released a statement that FedEx opposes the NRA’s position on “assault rifles” and that they think they should be limited to the military. (It’s worth pointing out that true assault rifles are indeed mostly limited to the military, police, licensed dealers, and those who jumped through NFA hoops to open them.)

Anyone remember when major companies tried to avoid taking sides in major political issues? Those were the days.

Frankly, I don’t think FedEx as a company should hold or mention political positions unrelated to its business of moving packages around.

So long as the contents of the packages they transport are legal and shipped in accordance with the relevant regulations, they should deliver the without issue or comment and stay out of unrelated political issues entirely.

NPR, polls: Millennials like guns too, think AWBs are stupid

Considering how much the media has been pushing the gun-control narrative, I was a bit surprised to see this article from NPR. Though, on further consideration, I’m not really all that surprised: NPR does at least try to report things factually, and to confront their internalized bias much more so than other major media outlets.

Some choice quotes:

Some have called [high school students -AZR] the “voice of a generation on gun control” that may be able to turn the tide of a long-simmering debate.

But past polling suggests that people under 30 in the U.S. are no more liberal on gun control than their parents or grandparents — despite diverging from their elders on the legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage and other social issues.

This doesn’t surprise me me: young people have access to a vast amount of information, social networking, etc. This allows them to network with other like-minded people even if they’re physically distant. Online forums, blogs, discussion boards, YouTube videos, Facebook groups, etc. allow for those interested in gun rights to meet and discuss guns without many downsides.

Plus, there’s a lot more information about there showing people having fun with guns in safe, responsible ways, from hunting to competition to plinking. Guns aren’t some mystery hidden away that nobody in certain social groups ever sees or interacts with, as they were when I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, but something that one can easily learn about, experience, and communicate with without leaving the comfort of one’s own home.

Over the past three years, [polling organization Gallup -AZR] asked the under-30 crowd if gun laws in the U.S. should be made more strict, less strict or kept as they are now. On average, people between the ages of 18 and 29 were one percentage point more likely to say gun laws should be more strict than the overall national average of 57 percent.

[…]

Polling by the Pew Research Center last year came to similar conclusions: 50 percent of millennials, between the ages of 18 and 36, said that gun laws in the U.S. should be more strict. That share was almost identical among the general public, according to Kim Parker, director of social trends research at Pew.

Sounds about right.

I thought this bit was really interesting:

Pew did find significant differences between millennials and older generations on two gun control proposals — banning assault-style weapons and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The results showed that a greater share of millennials — both Republicans and Democrats — are more conservative when it comes to those bans compared to Generation X-ers, Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation.

“What we’re hearing now in the immediate aftermath of Parkland might not be representative of what a whole generation feels,” Parker says.

That’s great news, and again unsurprising: the older generation of gun owners (“Gun Culture 1.0”) tends to be more interested in hunting, sporting clays, and other sporting usages of guns, while the younger shooters are more interested in self-defense, competition, and modern weapons.

Still, there’s a question mark about the future:

The teenaged high school activists who have been organizing since the Florida shooting, they say, are part of a separate group some call “Generation Z.” Pollsters generally don’t count the views of those under 18, so there probably won’t be national polling on this group until more of these young people are officially adults.

Hopefully we can bring these young people into the fold. I know I’ll try with my kids.

Still, for 19-year-old Abigail Kaye, who considers herself a millennial, these polling results about her peers come as a shock.

“I think that’s surprising because I feel like we’re a more progressive generation,” says Kaye, who attends the University of Delaware.

I don’t doubt she feels that way, since she grew up in Rhode Island and lives in Delaware. She’s living in a small anti-gun bubble that’s essentially the gun-related version of “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him!”

Unfortunately, not all the young people interviewed are familiar with guns. Or physics, really:

Sitting outside a student center on the University of Delaware’s campus, Cahlil Evans of Smyrna, Del., 20, says while he doesn’t need a gun, he can understand why people would want hunting rifles and handguns. He draws the line, though, for assault-style rifles.

“There’s no need for these high-caliber rifles that pierce through walls,” Evans says. “People can say they use them for hunting or whatever, but why do you need a weapon with such high caliber that it would pierce through the animal and like eight trees behind it?”

It appears the gun controller’s efforts to depict common semi-auto rifles as extremely high-powered death machines have met with some receptive minds. We, as the gun owning community, really need to do more outreach to correct these misconceptions.

The article ends on a high note, which inspires some optimism in these turbulent times:

Still, 22-year-old Jeremy Grunden of Harrington, Del., says he’s encouraged to hear that millennials are less likely to support banning assault-style weapons.

“I base what we need off of what the military has,” says Grunden, who is president of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware. “When it comes to … the Second Amendment, we’re supposed to be a well-armed and well-maintained militia and all that. Quite frankly, we need that and plus more.”

Nicely done Mr. Grunden. Keep up the good work.

Personally, I’m disappointed that NPR consider gun control to be a “liberal” thing and gun rights to be a “conservative” thing. Sure, people and positions have become more polarized and ossified in recent years, but I like to think of gun rights as a “liberty” thing that is independent of political sides. I may be alone in that viewpoint, however, and I think that it’ll be a problem for gun rights going forward. Sure, millennials may have similarly pro-gun-rights positions as us somewhat older folks (says the guy from the “Oregon Trail generation” of the early 80s), but if their other political positions (e.g., those on gay rights, abortion, health care, Trump, etc.) align more with the Democrats (who are decidedly anti-gun), their interest and support for gun rights won’t amount to much.

On a related note, one aspect of the NRA’s media strategy over the last few years has irked me greatly. They’ve really been pushing this whole “cultural bundling”, “anti-liberal” thing of late, and that’s been incredibly off-putting to both young people, liberals (yes, there are gun-owning liberals), libertarians, etc. Yes, the NRA needs to be outspoken about gun rights and opposing gun control, but I’d really love to see them be a bit less divisive and more appealing to non-conservatives. Same goes for other major groups like the GOA (which is very right-wing).

Knowing so many things that aren’t so.

Ronald Reagan once said, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

Every day proves that statement to be more and more true.

In looking over the print media coverage of the Parkland , I’ve been astounded at the number of blatantly untrue things about the NRA, guns, I’ve seen reported as fact.

Some examples that stand out to me:

The NRA is “pro-slaughter”. (WTF?)
The NRA TV channel produces dangerous, violent content. (Really? Really? Even the most controversial stuff they’ve put out explicitly condemns violence.)
The NRA is primarily funded by and works for the interests of gun manufacturers and industry, who are unfathomably evil and complicit in the murders of innocents.
Gun owners and NRA members receive “marching orders” from the NRA itself and follow them like automatons.
The AR-15 is a “weapon of mass destruction”. (No, it’s just a goddamn rifle.)
Someone armed with a “conventional” weapon (yes, the article used that term) stands no chance against a bad guy with an AR-15. No chance at all, so why bother?
Groups like the CSGV, VPC, Giffords, or Everytown are even remotely credible sources for information about guns, gun specifications/technology, etc. Seriously, I’ve seen newspapers quote reps from CSGV and VPC as if they are reputable, credible sources. I had to physically restrain myself from guffawing.
Plans to “arm teachers” mean something more than “let willing, volunteer teachers carry concealed as a last-resort against violent attack”.
The “armed teacher” strategy would be something other than “standard lockdown procedures, getting behind cover/concealment like a desk, and aiming a pistol at the door”, and that training requirements would be too rigorous. One particular example, to which I won’t link, stated that soldiers need tons of practice and constant training for tactical movement, coordination, communication, building clearing, etc. (all of which is true!) and implied that similar training would be necessary for teachers, and so that proposals to arm teachers are ludicrous. Ok, fair enough, the training requirements for teachers are likely to be a bit more rigorous than “aim at the door and shoot the bad guy when they come in”, but it’s by no means necessary to turn teachers into Special Forces operators or anything.
Armed teachers would somehow make things worse in the event of a school shooting. Honestly, I can’t think of much worse things than a deranged killer rampaging through defenseless people. Even in the terrible, exceedingly unlikely situation where an armed teacher hits an innocent person, or a cop clearing the building shoots the armed teacher, that’s almost certainly a better outcome than what would come about if the bad guy was left unchecked.

In addition, I’ve had someone in a discussion claim that it’s equally as morally and ethically repugnant to be “forcing students to be in the same room as an armed teacher” [their position] (even if the teacher is safely carrying concealed with nobody the wiser) as it is to “forcibly deny people the right to self-defense, leaving them defenseless against a deranged bad guy” [my position].

I’ve seriously wondered if something has gotten into the water, because people are losing their minds over this. These are interesting times, and it’ll be interesting to see how things play out.

In the interim, I really need to stop reading the news and stock up on antacids.

Media: reciprocity is making the sky fall!

H.R.38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, passed out of the House of Representatives yesterday and is now headed for the Senate. As expected, the media is beside itself with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Let’s look at the New York Times’ article about it, starting a bit into the article:

Together, the measures were the first gun-related bill to pass through the chamber since two of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Tex., in the fall.

While technically true, it seems a bit misleading to conflate lawful carry with the criminal misuse of arms. Still, par for the course for the Times.

But the background check measure was not enough to win over most Democrats, nor did it persuade law enforcement officials in some of the largest cities, including New York, who say the legislation would force locales with strict gun laws to bow to places with few or no gun restrictions.

So, the Democrats are against improving the NICS system. Got it. Nice to have that on record. Ss for forcing locales with strict gun laws to “bow” to places with few or no gun restrictions, good. Those strict laws are unjust.

Democrats said the measure would jeopardize public safety and set a dangerous precedent for overriding states’ rights to determine their own laws.

States can determine their own laws, but that doesn’t mean those laws are right, just, or constitutional. Restricting honest people from effectively protecting themselves is a terrible thing.

The House bill would not force states to change their own laws, but it would treat a concealed-carry permit like a driver’s license, letting individuals allowed by one state to carry a concealed weapon with them into another state.

Seems perfectly reasonable. What’s the issue here?

It would also allow visitors to national parks, wildlife refuges and other federally administered lands to legally carry concealed guns. And it carves out a provision that would let qualified permit holders carry concealed guns in school zones.

Good.

Law enforcement officials from major cities like New York and Los Angeles, where strict gun control laws are aimed at handguns, warned that the bill would usurp states’ authority to set their own laws and effectively impose the lax laws of Southern and rural states on densely populated cities.

Excellent. Nullifying or overturning unjust laws is a good thing, whether it’s overriding laws mandating racial segregation in the South or laws that restrict good people from protecting themselves.

Treating carry permits like any other state-issued license or certificate, like a driver’s license, marriage license, etc. is only logical. If I can drive from Arizona to New York without having to get a driver’s license from each state in between — even though those states all have somewhat different traffic laws — I should be able to do the same thing with a carry permit. The fact that one has a carry permit means that one has been vetted by both state and federal background checks, and is one of the most law-abiding people in the country. These are the people who should be encouraged to carry wherever they can.

In short, all the things that the New York Times and other media are complaining about are the very things that I’m pleased to hear. Now, if only the Senate can get this passed and signed into law. One can hope.