Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Holder Lite

Here in Oregon, we have USAG-OR Amanda Marshall, who takes space offered by the anti-gun fishwrap to "make a case" against being able to buy guns privately.

In Marshall's op-ed, she lists a few scary-sounding cases, then jumps right into her preferred fix of mandatory background checks for all gun transactions.

One problem:

Marshall does not claim that any of the "scary" cases she presented is a case of the purported "gun-show loophole" case, and in fact, all the gun possessions mentioned were already illegal by laws already on the books, and a quick look at the perps would show that they were not the types who would have followed any sort of law, anyway.

That's an inferential leap which requires Warp Drive to cross, I'd say.

Then, she ignores the 900# gorilla in the room in writing her op-ed: Holder and the USDOJ simply can't be trusted. In fact, the entire US Government can't be trusted.

Refer to Chris Muir's "Day By Day" 'toon for today. In that first panel, Muir apparently quotes a Miami attorney in summing up the malfeasance of the Obama Administration, very concisely.

Ms. Marshall, should you read this blog, please tell me why any citizen with even a minor education would trust the US Government at this point. Trust is important, since there are Federal Laws prohibiting the Government from maintaining a gun registration list from FFL's records of purchase of guns. If that system of background checks, now in effect only for FFL-purchases, were extended to all purchases, what is to keep the Feds from ignoring the restrictions and making their own list? Bear in mind, for the failed Manchin-Toomey Bill, the feds would have had up to 72 hours to complete a check which is now generally completed in less than a half-hour. What were they planning to do with the extra time if not produce an illegal record of the checks?

If I can't trust your boss, Ms. Marshall, why should I trust you?

Trust is everything, and the Government has exactly none to sell us at the moment.

The First Shot of the Second Revolutionary War

...may have just been fired, by the Obama Administration.

First, go read Joe's excellent explanation of ITAR, the vehicle by which the Administration hopes to kill both the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution.

For the first time, yesterday ITAR was implemented against a "Joe Sixpack", not a firm dealing in arms, or export of computer technology, just a guy with an idea on how to use evolving technology.

The Joe Sixpack in this case is the Printed Gun Guy.

Several things to disregard:

• The Printed Gun Guy is a jerk. Comes across as one, anyway. He's about on a par with the Open Carry folks who DO TRY to intimidate others with the sight of big scary guns. Ever hear of an O/C guy openly carrying a Kel-Tec P3AT?
• Cody Wilson claims to be advancing this 3-D Printer technology for the purpose of spreading Anarchy. Goodness, we all need more of THAT, don't we?
• The "Printed AR" that Wilson developed is a POS. It fell apart in this test after 6 rounds fired, and is a huge danger to the firer. It would be lawyered out of existance if it was sold on the open market.

Given that Cody Wilson and his "WikiGun Project" is apparently in full-failure mode, why couldn't the Feds have just let him fail, or perhaps sued him for making/spreading the use of a dangerous product?

But no, the Feds jumped the shark.

They trot out ITAR, which they claim, (read Joe's blog) gives them the right of control over ANY information or process that offers ANY chance to arm or improve the armaments of an enemy. That position, were it to become tested in court and be the Law of the Land, would negate the First AND Second Amendments to our Constitution, and thereby, make the Federal Government into a prima-facie dictatorship, controlling thought, speech, dissemination of information and of course, all guns.

I repeat, ALL guns. It also means all training with guns, accessories for guns, ammo for guns, etc.

If the Feds can claim a non-battleworthy POS like the WikiGun (or the data set to build it) could possibly be considered of value to an enemy, then ANYTHING is of value to an enemy. For that matter, since the basic society of the USA is superior to the basic society of any of the shitholes we call our enemies these days, you could, by extension, say that US society itself is of aid to the enemy.

If this is an isolated case, just an inept Administration's way of trying to snuff out a concept that has the potential to obsolete the entire National Firearms Act (if properly applied, which it isn't in this case), then fine, it will soon cease to be of importance.

There is, however, a huge danger that this Administration will expand on their use of ITAR as an anti-freedom tool, and in that case, make a note of it, History fans:

May 9th, 2013, the Federal Government fired the first shot in the Second Revolutionary war. That shot hit it's intended target, which the Federal targeting mavens had wrongly guessed would pre-emptively end the fight for freedom.

If we see more of ITAR though, there will be more shots fired, and they likely will NOT be fired from POS plastic guns or lawyer's processes, they will be fired from real rifles, at important targets ON BOTH SIDES.

Do you want real Gun Control, Mister Obama? If you do, just leave us alone. Our guns already ARE under control, and will stay that way. Loss of control for YOU, Mister Obama, will stem from trying to erase our gun freedoms. Only an Idiot fails to see that, and you're supposed to be a smart guy, not an idiot. 

Victory!

Aboard: the USS Liberator, a ship of war, docked for repairs at her home port, any coast, USA.

!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#

Captain:(waks into the Radio Room) "Radioman, stand by to copy a message. Send the letter "V". Send to all stations, all commands."

Radioman: "Sir?"

Captain: "Sir, what, Sparks"

Radioman: "Sir, what is the rest of the message?"

Captain: "Sparks, that IS the message, "V" "

Captain: Never Mind. Sparks, take five, but before you go, set your transmitter to the frequency for Flash Traffic, all stations"

Radioman: "yes Sir."

The radioman flips a few switches, then gets up from his console and the Captain sits down.

Captain: (operating the key): Dit Dit Dit Daaah.

Radioman: (who never left his little cubby behind the Captain's bridge): "Sir, you just sent flash traffic of Victor." Our instructions are to NEVER send just a "V", because it is the agreed-upon signal for Victory in this War, Sir?"

Captain: (handing Sparks a photo-scan of a newspaper).

Radioman: "Yes, SIR! We HAVE won, Sir!"

Here's that photograph that Sparks just saw:

 

Captain: "Do you have a microphone for the ship's P/A in here, Sparks?"

Radioman: "Yes, Sir."  (flips a few switches at his console and pulls up a microphone, handing it to the Captain)

Captain: (to ship, via P/A) "Now hear THIS. This is the Captain. All work not essential to ship's combat readiness is to cease IMMEDIATELY. The Captain grants the crew 12 hours of LIBERTY ashore. The usual liberty line will now form. While you are ashore, Sailors, hoist one to the Oregon Firearms Federation, for without their tireless work in this fight, we would not have prevailed. That is ALL."

Captain (to radioman): "Can you make a tape of "V", and pipe it on the P/A for five minutes?

Radioman: "Yes SIR. Some of us have something to go home to now."

Captain: "Yes, I know that, Sparks. Your family has a farm in Scio, don't they?"

Radioman: "Yes Sir, they do. They recently re-incorporated the farm as "Liberty Farms", too, Sir"

(In the passageway, a jubilant sailor marches by, his broom at High Port. As he passes the radio room, he snaps his head to the left, passing in review and saluting Sparks, the bearer of the good news. He does NOT flinch upon seeing the Captain in the cubby, but he does lose his composure and crack a wide grin.)

Captain: (to sailor in the passageway): "Carry on, Sailor (and the Captain cracks a matching wide grin)."

########################################

I hope you liked this little ditty. This post has a second purpose, though, and that is to remind the fraction of the Legislature that pushed to overturn gun rights in Oregon that WE aren't the "extremists", as Senator Burdick (D - Portland) was just quoted as saying, SHE is the extremist for trying to take those rights away, and for her political tricks of trying to do it while dancing in the blood of murdered children in Newtown, CT and the murdered Christmas shopper here in Oregon.

While we're at it, shame on the liberal Press for enabling these attacks on our Civil Rights. Shame on the Democratic Party for lining up to support stripping citizens of their Civil Rights.

Yes, there's a lot of joy to spread with this news, but there's also a lot of shame to note.

The rights-killing extremists WILL be back. We have just enough time for a short celebration before their next attack, I'm sure of that.

Excuse me, I think I shall go to the range and celebrate by firing the annual qualifying course for LEOSA-04 (HR-218).

The latest PSH from the LibLoons

...is going to result in the outlawing of shooters' reactive targets. The most common reactive target utilizes a compound known as "tannerite".

KGW-TV8 in Portland, presumably with sister station KING-5 in Seattle and the companion cable outfit NWCN Channel 49, is about to unleash an "investigative report" about tannerite targets. Tannerite is currently sold in small quantities for the individual to make up their own targets, and some ready-made targets used to be available also (I haven't looked into these for years).

Apparently, the LibLoons at KGW feel that someone might assemble enough tannerite to GASP!!! make a bomb of some sort. Now, anyone familiar with tannerite knows that is is about the lowest-order explosive that either deserves the name or can even go  "boom". It has far less blast effect than black powder, especially FFFg black powder.

So, KGW teased this "report" last night. It will be broadcast at 5 & 11pm Monday the 6th. In it, their people caused a car to "explode". This "explosion" created a lot of smoke which hid the car, and then the teaser shot ended without us getting a look to see if the car, a ruster left out in the boondox, was further damaged by whatever quantity of tannerite the "investigative reporter" used.

Now, do you suppose that the KGW crew that stages this "explosion" had intent to use tannerite to cause physical damage to something other than a target? If so, I want to see them all arrested by the FBATFE unless they had the prior permission and supervision of that Federal enforcement agency. The charge is unlawful use of an explosive, and assembling enough tannerite to physically damage the car would have been an express violation of it's use, just as making a firework-stuffed bomb was for the Tsarnaevs.

OTOH, it's possible that KGW will NOT have misused the tannerite in a large enough quantity, and the beater car wasn't damaged other than maybe some windows blown out (that weren't already shot out). In that case, it's much ado about nothing, isn't it? The proper use of tannerite has never caused damage other than setting brush fires when it is used in high fire-danger conditions. The small report it makes, similar to a light charge of black powder going off when a small-caliber duelling pistol is discharged, is meant to disclose that the target was struck, by the quantity of white smoke released and by the moderate report.

BTW, if the EFWs (explosives-fearing wusses) at KGW cared to research the matter, damn near anything that burns can be made to explode. Explosion, after all, is only a rapid-rate oxydization of a compound that exceeds the speed of sound. If you confine many ordinary fire-starting compoounds, they will explode if they are self-oxydizing.

Coming on the heels of a recent major rehash of the Clackamas Mall shooting last December, one may safely assume that KGW is all about trying to panic the Oregon Legislature into passing draconian gun control legislation now being considered in that august body.

There's a warning to take away from the LibLoons, though, and that warning is for the blackpowder shooting fraternity: there will be some huge new regulations coming down on YOUR sport. You can now keep 10 pounds (70,000 grains) of black powder in your reloading room. Look for that to be severely cut, and registration of black powder purchases to begin soon. This KGW lunacy may even be aimed at the BP people, with tannerite only a stalking horse.

Mop-up work

Now that the anti-gun hordes have been defeated in their bull-rush to overturn the Bill of Rights, it's not time to retire from the battlefield just yet. There's mop-up work to do. Spotter! Find me a target....

My letter submitted to the local fishwrap this ayem:

Editors:

Now that most of the emoting over gun control has ended the with somber realization that we have a Constitution to reflect on, not destroy, let's have that "conversation".

Commenters have tried to make the point that the more-efficent weapons of today would have been prohibited by the Founders because they were good and moral men, and a single soldier firing more than a dozen shots in a battle was unusual. These arguments say that the technology of killing has overtaken the bucolic pace of the Founders' existence, and by extension, the pace of their thought, so the Second Amendment must be denied or revised.

This might be a good argument if immutable Civil Rights weren't being discussed, but they are. A Civil Right is forever, or it is worthless. A Civil Right must, by definition, be unchangeable.

I might remind the anti-gunners that the First Amendment seems to have survived onrushing technology quite nicely, and we still have and cherish that freedom, so why not the freedom to keep and bear arms?

 

Don't support "FixNICS"

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has trotted out a new campaign, "FixNICS", which wants to force the States to contribute all the records that might disqualify a gun buyer.

First, this "problem" of states supplying insufficent data is already taken care of in Federal law, by making a person HAVE to buy a gun in their own State, or complete the transfer in their own state. So, it is a matter for the States to insure that they comply with the Federal policy of not selling a gun to someone mentally and legally unfit to possess guns. It is NOT a matter for the Feds to force states to do this. The Tenth Amendment says that. In other words, "FixNICS" a solution looking for a problem, and that is a damn poor way to make law.

Then, there is the matter of what NICS is supposed to be: an "instant" check system. In the just-failed Manchin-Toomey "compromise" gun bill, ALL gun sales were to be run through NICS, but that proposed law gave NICS an excuse to NOT be "instant". It gave NICS up to 48 hours to run a check at a gun show, and up to 72 hours to run a check for a gun store. If passed, Manchin-Toomey would have mandated a back-door National Waiting Period, and it would have killed gun shows. As I pointed out recently, many gun shows don't run for 48 hours, which meant that the actual transfers of guns could not be made at those shows, and for those which run 2 1/2 days, a transfer might be possible, but only if the buyer got there on Friday, applied for transfer, and came back late Sunday to finish it. All other transfers would have had to be completed off-site of the gun show.

So, all you NSSF supporters, do NOT sign their petition to send blast faxes and emails to Congress to FixNICS. We need to force NSSF to hold the line and demand that NICS remain "instant", in fact, any new Bill would offer the perfect vehicle to dwmand that NICS meet a better definition of "instant", say, a 3-minute return, or even better, a server that anyone, not just FFLs, could enquire against. I could see each gun show having a few computers right inside the entry door to run checks and print out the results for the show-goer to present to the dealers at the show. I could even see a new regulation that a Prohibited Person not be allowed in a gun show if it permits hands-on examinations of guns, and almost all of them do. I just can't see the political lie of foisting off a Waiting Period and a system to end gun shows as an improvement of any kind.

The NSSF is looking like the Elmer Fudds here. If we let the gun makers get away with a Manchin-Toomey "fix" to NICS, we have been divided and we will have been conquered.

Punditry

Word from the Hill is that Manchin-Toomey is a done deal, there will be 60 votes with enough Rs crossing over to guarantee the Waiting Period Bill gets passed.

Now, Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government, which represents only solid conservative political thought and action, says that it could pass the House as well, guaranteeing that the House changes hands next November as enough conservatives "throw the bums out" who attacked the Second Amendment.

The problem here is that no one will report the facts, except a few righty bloggers such as myself.

Political Correctness has come to the Second Amendment. It's now PeeCee to be intolerant of sections of the formerly-sacrosanct Bill of Rights, so naturally, the (D)emocrats got their intolerance for the 2A on first, it being the thin steel line against the Left becoming all-powerful and having a de-facto dictatorship of the Left, and this Nation becoming a de-facto Socialist Dictatorship.

The simple fact is that so-called "moderate" (R)epublicans have bought into PeeCee, and are just as susceptible to it as (D)emocrats, maybe more so, since (R)epublicans have to try harder as "Change" wasn't in their vocabulary before now.

Send all the communications to your congress-critters you want, but they will do no good, since the dampfwalser is fully steamed up, and it's driver Herr Boehner just opened the throttle.

Of course, gravity rules on this slippery-slope we're on now, because failing to maintain position on any Enumerated Right means that any of the rest of them can be beaten down also, and will be. It might take a generation, but by the time my kids are in their rocking chairs, this Nation will never have seen any conservative ideals maintained, and perhaps the Lefty Prexy of that future People's Democratische Republik of Amerika will finally just give a speech and declare the original Constitution over and done with. By then, all those who still give a shit will be too old and weak to pull the trigger on whatever guns might have escaped the foregoing gun grabs.

I'm sorry I bothered to project the fantasy that this was still a Free Nation of Citizens.

It is now a pre-dictatorship of the Left, with it's citizens now Subjects, but you CAN hold your breath on the "pre", it will be very fleeting.

I'm not King Canute: I know when the tide is mightier than a "mere scrap of paper" that was entitled the Constitution of the United States of America.

When this Gun Control passes, and Obama thunders from his Socialist pulpit that he has brought us to a New Age of Enlightenment, I'll close this blog. I'm getting too old and stove-up to take the field, anyway, so going out in a blaze of Glory is not in order, either. I'll just dodder off into the sunset as is the fate of all old fools.

Manchin-Toomey ends gun shows

Surprised? Why?

So, Alan Gottlieb, the great rescuer of all things 2A, now endorses an Amendment to Harry Reid's anti-gun Bill.

So, people are falling all over themselves to say, "Must be a good thing, Alan Gottlieb supports it."

Guess who else supports it?

Michael Farging Bloomberg.

Susan Rino Collins.

Plus a host of others who will climb on board tomorrow.

Who is against it? The NRA.

Hmmmm, you say, hmmmm, isn't the NRA supposed to go along with the supersmartie lawyer Gottlieb?

In this case, your first clue is "The enemy of my friend is MY enemy." 

Now read the take in Politico. It has most of the key stuff in it, but it's missing one VERY important detail, the mechanics of the background check itself. The background checks are supposed to take no more than 72 hours (read: they try to do them in 72 hours) except for gun shows, where the Feds will try to do them in 48 hours.

Oopsie, Festus. How long does a Gun Show last? About two days. Some start on Friday and end on Sunday. Some smaller ones run Saturday and Sunday only. 48 hours means you have to sign up for your gun at the show on Friday, then, assuming approval, pick it up on Sunday 48 hours later. What if you can't get there Friday afternoon at the latest? What if it's a Sat-Sun gun show?

Sorry, Charlie, now you might have to chase your gun to hell and back, and maybe pay another $100 for transfer and shipping, not to mention TWO trips to the gun show, parking, etc.

I guess that this new system will cost the gun show promoters, the guys who rent the hall, arrange a parking company, etc, about 30% of attendees at a minimum. Volume of gun purchases versus lookie-loos will drop more. Trade shows, including gun shows, are a very marginal business which can't take a 30% hit.

Buh-Bye, gun shows.

Hello, going to a gun store in your home town.

Hello a de-facto national Waiting Period, which the last Instant NICS check did away with.

Say, how did Alan Gottlieb build his practice anyway? Wasn't it representing gun store proprietors?

Follow the money.

Also follow the Left's agenda. They have FOREVER been out to "close the gun show loophole". We're about to give them a bonus: get rid of gun shows all together. Then the Administration hires a few thousand more FBATFE bully-boys, and starts hammering on the gun stores.

By the end of Obama's second term, I could see total annual gun sales declining by half.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, the bennies of the Bill: zero, zip, nada, rien. 

Read this paragraph from the above link:

“If you read the Manchin-Toomey substitute amendment, you can see all the advances for our cause that it contains like interstate sales of handguns, veteran gun rights restoration, travel with firearms protection, civil and criminal immunity lawsuit protection, and most important of all, the guarantee that people, including federal officers, will go to federal prison for up to 15 years if they attempt to use any gun sales records to set up a gun registry,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s organization in a statement."

Okay, smarties, point out to me just what in Gottlieb's laundry list there isn't already permitted to us as gun rights? National Reciprocity? Get yourself a UT and FL CHL and you have 40 states, and the others are going to sue to keep themselves out of such a national system, anyway. All Gottlieb seems to be doing is re-encoding current law. There might be some more protection in the "civil and criminal immunity protection", but I'll have to read it. BTW, that dis-incentive for Federal Officers to form a Gun Registry? It's already in the NICS check system now, but the current NICS is truly instant, and now there's all this time given to the Feds to conduct checks and make some sort of a stealth record.

Since the obvious purpose of this new version is to get something anti-gun, anything at all, and obviously there is a side purpose of killing off gun shows, or at least forcing them to radically change their sales formats, if this thing flies, it's a huge win for Obama and a huge blow to the 2A.

Stand your ground, NRA, and try to figure out how to stall this cockroach until the sun comes up and chases it back under the rock.

 

Dueling Constitutions?

Each State has their own Constitution, and of course, we have the Federal Constitution.

What happens when the State and Federal Constitutions disagree?

In that case, a lawsuit is heard, at either the State level, if the matter is first brought there, or the Federal level, when the claim is that the Federal Constitution should take precedence.

In the case of legal issues (civil rights) that are directly referred to by the Bill of Rights, there is a doctrine involved (in Oregon, anyway) that, in the matter of civil liberties, no State law ar article of the State Constitution may be more restrictive of enumerated Rights than the Federal Constitution.

You see where this is going, right?

How the Hell can a State restrict the Right to Keep and Bear Arms more than the most current interpretation of the Federal Constitution does?

In Oregon, there have been numerous cases involving this Doctrine which centered around the First Amendment. In every one of those cases, any interpretations of Oregon's Constitution on Oregon's First Amendment have always come down on the side which interprets Oregon's First Amendment more liberally than Federal law does. The current case on point involved the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which closed a "gentlemen's club" in Salem, the State Capitol, when the business employed pole dancers under the age of 21. The titty-bar successfully argued the "No stricter than" doctrine, successfully argued that exotic dancing was a form of artistic expression, and women of 18 years were free to be artistic in public places.

It seems strange that I haven't heard of this Doctrine being applied in re: the 2A in States like NY, CN, MD, MA, IL.

Perhaps it is time for one of our brillant 2A barristers to generate a Federal lawsuit that those States (likely only a partial list) all violate the (no stricter than) Doctrine, and seek to have the SCOTUS invalidate their draconian gun laws.

The Doctrine is either there or it isn't, or so it seems to this non-lawyer.

A good offense always trumps a defense. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to jail Lefty (and a few righty) pols for enacting anti-gun legislation which exceed standards ordered under the Heller or McDonald cases?

How about it, 2A Law-dogs?

Speaking of 2A squishes...

1723 PDT, 2023 New Yawk time, Bill O'Reilly's program:

O'Reilly to Lou Dobbs, "Doesn't it make sense to have gun registration?"

Rivrdog to O'Reilly:

1.  "Wouldn't it make sense, Mister O'Reilly, to note that no other Nation gives it's citizens continuing legal permission to remove a  tyrannical Government by force of arms, and this one Nation which does that HAS to insure that no laws exist which enable the Government to disarm the citizens?"

2.  Would you like an example of a country which disarmed it's citizens, then murdered them?

2a.  Nazi Germany, Bill O'Reilly. Think it can't happen here, O'Reilly? There's evidence that the NFA of 1968 was modeled DIRECTLY on Hitler's gun grab of the early 1930s, and what's more, that NFA 1968 was promulgated specifically to deny arms to black people, a racist purpose that Congress went along with and the President signed.

3.  Bill O'Reilly follows Vatican Catholic doctrine. The Catholic church is anti-gun, and O'Reilly is for whatever the Church is for. He wears his Catholicism on his sleeve, even when it conflicts with his Constitution, which he professes to support (but in the case of the 2A, doesn't). In his own mind, O'Reilly has established Catholicism as his State religion, giving it superiority over his own Constitution. O'Reilly is not just a 2A squish, he is a First Amendment squish as well, denying by his action the 1A's Establishment Clause.

Bill O'Reilly is a good example of why you have to have a strong Second Amendment: if you don't, every hosehead who comes along with "better" ideas has a free ride to uproot the Constitution.

Bill O'Reilly, for everything you've done good as a "Culture Warrior", you've erased it by denying the First and Second Amendments.

As we used to say in the USAF, "one ah-shit erases a whole folder full of attaboys".