We all know the veterans that spent their time in the military behind a desk. They only time they touched their weapon was when they were in boot camp or when they had to qualify. The vets that never deployed but have a strong opinions.

We see them when a former general says “fully semi-automatic” when describing an AR-15. Or the vet that says “I know what the AR-15 can do, no civilian should own an AR-15”. They lay claim to an authority of opinion that they have not earned and do not deserve.

This image came from my Lady. She was laughing because this proved that the poster really wasn’t a vet.

Yeah, the forward assist is not a selector switch. Nor is “armored infantry for the Coast Guard”.

Except context matters. This was a troll posting. War Path is a name I’ve seen before and not as a wannabe. So yeah Trolling.

This tweet was in response to this one:

When I was in the Army, we kept our M-16’s locked up in the armory. The only time we brought them out was for guard duty — or when we trained for war.

— Lakota Man (@LakotaMan1) July 6, 2022

And Lakota Man responded, you can see it in the image above “Exactly. Thank You.”

Trolling accomplished.

Context matters.

On any given day there will be a dozen different articles or opinions posted to major news organizations about guns. Well, not guns, gun rights, well not gun rights, OUR right to self defense.

The arguments are so tired and well worn that in most cases you can discard them within moments.

Militia! What about the Militia!

These are the people that read “A well regulated Militia,” and stop. If the amendment mentions militia it must be about the militia.

These are the same people that say that until 2008 and the Heller decision there was no individual right to keep and bear arms. They might state it a little differently “the individual right to keep and bear arms was not recognized until 2008” They are ignorant or deceitful regarding the facts that until around 1968 it was always considered an individual right.

But what about all the gun violence!

These are the people that are not interested in the law as written. They are interested in the law as interpreted. They believe in a balancing act between the common good and the law. If they believe that the common good is more important than the law then the common good should prevail.

In the past when “for the common good” was applied, you ended up with strange fruit hanging from the lamp posts.

You can hear and read this point of view in the descent to Bruen.

You don’t need a (Fill in the blank)!

Unlike every other right there are people that believe the right to self defense should be limited by need. And need is defined by them, not you. If they don’t think you need an AR-15 then the second amendment doesn’t apply to an AR-15. If they don’t think you need a semi-automatic center fire rifle then the second amendment doesn’t apply to semi-automatic center fire rifles.

By defining and limiting what is covered by the second amendment they are able to reduce the second amendment to a meaningless trope.

That place is to sensitive to have firearms

For some reason they believe that people that carry firearms will lose control and start shooting random people. Now it does happen that evil people shoot others because they are evil. The justification seems to be that by creating a gun free zone that people will be safer within those zones.

The obvious problem with this is that gun free zones are only apply to the law abiding. They do not apply to criminals. In addition, because of the limits on the law abiding they become a place where it is easier for criminals to operate.

If a property owner wishes to only allow criminals with guns into and onto their property, so be it. We should then decide not to enter those places to do business. If a crime then takes place in one of these places the property owner should be liable as they did not provide adequate protection for those on their property.

Years ago we went to Six flags in Maryland. On the way in we had to pass through metal detectors. Bags had to be checked. They got very upset about my Swiss Army Knife. They didn’t notice the large folder that was in my camera bag. They would not have noticed if I had a full size 1911 in that bag.

Criminal Guns Only zones just don’t work without a great deal of effort.

They Only Meant Muskets!

Leaving out the rifles of the time and all the other amazing advancements in firearm technology going on.

They are unable to figure out that if there was a technology restriction on rights they would loose almost all of their other rights.

The Pennsylvania Gazette, the newspaper published by Ben Franklin, published once a week and had a subscriber base smaller than this blog. (It is hard to find circulation numbers, take that last statement with a grain of salt). Yet nobody really thinks that the first amendment doesn’t apply to the Internet, regardless of all the yapping about “hate speech isn’t free speech”.

It is to deadly

Almost everything we do today is faster and has larger impact on more people than what was happening in the 1700’s. Most people didn’t hurl across the earth in contraptions of steel and plastic weight thousands of pounds. Each one of which was capable of destroying most homes of the late 1700’s.

A food processor is significantly more capable than the knives of 1776.

Balance

nj.com has a history of unbalanced articles regarding firearm rights. Earlier this week they published a balanced article. It is almost as if they can see where things are going and are making editorial decisions that don’t make them out to be complete fools.

The U.S. high court’s ruling, known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, “opens up the possibility of scrutinizing all modern-era firearms laws, which seem to be preoccupied with banning hardware as opposed to punishing wrongdoers and intervening with people with mental health problems,” said Scott Bach, the head of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs.

There are many more quotes from gun rights advocates in the article. There is one from gun rights inf ringers and none from the usual suspects.

A spokesman for acting state Attorney General Matthew Platkin, who is named as a defendant in the two major suits, declined to comment. But Platkin saw these legal challenges coming.

“The opinion in Bruen (the Supreme Court gun permit case) will encourage individuals to challenge other laws, ranging from our limits on who can buy guns, to our limits on the most dangerous kinds of guns New Jersey residents can buy,” he wrote in an op-ed last week.

It is refreshing to read a news article in such an anti gun outlet in such an anti gun state that is not twisted in the normal ways.

N.J. gun laws face new legal challenges after Supreme Court strikes down concealed carry law

Peter Kehoe of the New York State Sheriff’s Association gave an interview. He was not kind to the Governor of NY.

He slammed Hochul for unconstitutionally pushing through her gun rights infringement bill without following the states constitution. As we reported earlier nobody had a chance to see the bill before it was voted on. The minority party was reporting that they didn’t have a copy until the day of the vote.

The citizens of NY surely didn’t get a chance to weigh in on the bill before a vote was forced. Another S.A.F.E. act passed in the dead of night without citizen input.

Kehoe: I think pretty clearly the intent was to stymie lawful gun owners from getting their permits and that would be unconstitutional by the state.

Anne: Do you believe that that infringes on second amendment rights?

Kehoe: Sure. By creating a rule they can’t abide by.

NYS Sheriffs: New gun laws unconstitutional by creating rules impossible to follow

A young lady in NYC decided to write a diary. Being a young lady what she wrote in her diary she considered to be private. It was her thoughts, her fears, her wants. It was for her.

Unfortunately, her brother was an uncultured clod and when he discovered her diary in a public area, knowing it was private, decided to read it. We can guess about how the brother handled such private disclosures.

The young lady realized that she needed some what to secure her diary from prying eyes. The idea of wrapping it in chains probably didn’t appeal to her. Like wise, it is unlikely she was able to get a high level wizard to spell lock it.

She found a small portable safe at a second hand store and bought it for cheap. She then proceeded to lock her personal items in the lock box to keep her private stuff private.

Her parents being meddling AWFLs couldn’t handle that so her father showed the lock box to a friend. The friend identified it as a “gun safe!” Exclamation marks in the original article.

Once the parents heard the word “gun” they had a mental break. They demanded that she get rid of the gun safe. They can’t have anything associated with a gun in the house. They young lady refused.

The parents aren’t worried about the gun safe holding a gun because the young lady is anti-gun but “GUN SAFE!” in the house is unacceptable.

Being unable to deal with their daughter refusing to give in to their crazed demands, the mother wrote to New York Times Social Q page for help.

There Philip Galanes comes to their rescue.

…Acknowledge your daughter’s valid distress and ask her to help you solve your problem with the gun safe in light of your shared philosophy about guns. Let her stash the diary elsewhere while you remove the safe, then negotiate a security system for her that wasn’t built for weapons.

More important, use this opportunity that’s fallen into your lap to talk with your children about guns. …
— Philip Galanes, New York Times: How Do We Get Rid of Our Teenage Daughter’s Gun Safe?

Yep, this editor of the NYT agrees with the parents that a gun safe is to awful to have in the home. Instead, the daughter should give up the good security she currently has for her diary and instead trust her parents to provide a “security system … that wasn’t built for weapons.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Is there an outreach program for parents like this? Heck, is there outreach programs for people that aren’t this far off their rockers?

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When the title of an article tells you how they are going to combat “gun violence” you know that it is another attempt at banning guns. Or a crime gun purchase/scam the ignorant effort.

The standard response to anything gun related by government is to ban it.

The assassin of Shinzo Abe used a home made gun. In Japan it is illegal to posses that gun. It is illegal to make a gun. It is almost impossible to get government permission to own a gun.

The assassin made what would have been called a “zip gun” and seems to have used black powder.

The president of these United States in his belated statement blamed gun violence. A one track record that is skipping in the first groove.

The City of Cincinnati is going to spend $1 million on programs to reduce violence

The city will spend $1 million to increase employment among youth and will work along side other nonprofits, such as the Urban League.
…
“This violence protection collaborative brings residents and organizations together to disrupt the pathways to violence through youth mentoring, advocacy and character building programming,” said Mayor Pureval.
— WKRC Local 2 Cincinnati city leaders announce new measures to combat rising gun violence

Some behind the scenes information and the results.

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The difference between an M-16 and an AR-15 are the “6 magic parts”. In 1990’s having an AR-15 along with any of those magic parts was enough to get you charged with a felony under the “intent” to make a machine gun.

Those parts are:

1. Bolt Carrier
2. Hammer
3. Trigger
4. Disconnector
5. Selector
6. Auto sear

The seriously magic part is the auto sear. THis part catches a hook on the back of the hammer and holds the hammer back until the bolt has locked up. Only then does the auto sear allow the hammer to drop, firing the weapon.

The auto sear fits above the selector. The difference between an AR-15 and a “machine gun” is the hole in the lower receiver for the auto sear pin. It is no longer the 6 magic pieces.

In addition to the actual auto sear there are drop in auto sears. They are very hard to find today (legally) because they were dirt cheap prior to 1986 and nobody was going to pay the ATF $200 on a $30 part. Today a DIAS goes for north of $30K. M-16A1s are going for around $35k. A modern M-16 that is not transferable can be purchased for $500-$750 on the cheap side. A full auto lower parts kit runs about $80.

Regardless, DIAS are a thing. They are a machined part with specification tolerances similar to that of an AR-15.

But there is another way. A “Lighting Link” is a thin piece of metal or bent up coat hanger that is suppose to perform the same function as the auto sear or DIAS. Reports say it is not as reliable as the actual part but it does work.

A company in Wisconsin or Florida, it is not clear where the company is located, created a laser engraved sheet of thin metal which outlined all the parts required to make a lighting link. The end user would have to cut out the parts and file them to the line, assemble the parts and then maybe it would work.

This was obviously done to get around the NFA by claiming 1st amendment protection of the printed/engraved item.

This was done successfully in the 1980’s in regards to PGP. Pretty Good Privacy used strong encryption. Encryption algorithms were considered “arms” under the ITAR regulations. Thus the government block the publication of PGP because it would be exporting arms. The work around was simple, they printed the code on an OCR font then sent the printed, 1st amendment protected, document to a country in Europe where they turned it back into code. Thus everybody gained access to strong personal encryption.

In the case of Matthew Hoover of Wisconsin and Kristopher Ervin of Florida the ATF raided them and accused them of all sorts of nasty violations of the NFA. Matthew and Kristopher have been slowly losing their cases.

On July 1st, 2022 Mathew Hoover filed to have the case dismissed based on Second Amendment grounds. They are claiming that the NFA is unconstitutional.

The Government may attempt to argue that machineguns are beyond the scope of the Second Amendment by attempting to characterize them as “dangerous and unusual,” as it has in other cases, but this is not the test. The court’s invocation of “dangerous and unusual” weapons in Heller and subsequently Bruen was for the purpose of discussion of what might be a constitutionally acceptable law, rather than the endorsement of any particular extant policy. Bruen, 597 U.S. at *12 (Clarifying that the Court was not undertaking “an exhaustive historical analysis…of the full scope of the Second Amendment”) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 627). Rather, the only way a court may conclude Defendant’s conduct falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment’s unqualified command remains clear: the Government must prove the particular regime in question is consistent with the history and tradition of the United States. Id at *15. Furthermore, the question of whether a weapon is “in common use at the time,” necessarily pins the analysis to the time before the prohibition. To consider otherwise would incentivize the Government to legislate wantonly and aggressively, seizing arms, then later evade constitutional scrutiny by suggesting that the arms cannot be in common use, because the Government prohibited them. Such circular logic would be inconsistent with any fundamental rights jurisprudence. Thus, the Government has the burden to prove that the regime in question is consistent with the history and tradition of firearms regulation in this country around the founding era.
— Machine Gun — USA v Matthew Hoover — Supplement to Motion to Dismiss070122

There will be more lawsuits against the NFA. This case might actually be strong enough given its first and second amendment defenses. It would not surprise me to see the courts dismiss this case on first amendment grounds, or the government, so that the NFA survives.

Edited: Fixed date from January 1st to July 1st

Elon Musk made news a few weeks ago by tweeting out an image of the left moving more and more left.

pic.twitter.com/Q9OjlJhi7f

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022

While this describes the left moving more and more left it covers many different aspects of our lives.

The court – said to be more pro-religion than at any time since the 1950s – wrapped up one of its most consequential and divisive terms this week. Critics lamented a string of decisions that they say undermine legal traditions that prevent government officials from promoting any particular faith.

Moira Donegan is correct, the court is more pro-religion than anytime since the 1950s. Not because they are particularly pro-religion, but because the court was seriously anti-religion for the last 50+ years. The establishment clause was intended to stop the federal government from imposing a state religion on the country. It was not about hiding religion.

There is a little white cross, or was, just inside the tree line off of I95 somewhere in Maryland. It has a name on it. The name of a man that died on I95. He was a Christian. He wasn’t a church going sort of man. He grew up in the church.

There are groups that routinely search out those little white crosses on public property to have them removed. They are insisting on freedom from religion. For this small minority seeing a religious symbol on public land is the same as the government establishing a state church.

This is what got prayer pulled from school. Freedom from religion. Now it could be strongly argued that morning prayer was going to far. There are people that aren’t Christians in the school system and forcing them to say the lords prayer is going to far.

Unfortunately, the pendulum swung away from supporting religion to the point where people in authority are not allowed to show any religious leanings. Pride flag on the wall? Check, approved. Trans people safe poster in the hallways? Check, approved. Cross in the classroom ? Not approved.

Freedom from religion also lead to lawsuits trying to get the 10 Commandments removed from a federal court house. To war memorials being destroyed. In one case a private group came together to purchase the land where the war memorial was but a lawsuit was filed to stop the purchase.

And no matter how hard they try to remove God from the schools, I promise you that prayer is going on all the time, it just wasn’t formalized.

The Moira doesn’t seem to believe in a higher power. When a republican say “The Lord was with me.” or anything religious, she appears to be triggered. Again, her faith in her own beliefs is so weak that she fears that hearing somebody else’s utterances will force religion on her.

Earlier I was trying to read an article in a national news organization and the author referred to the court as “controlled by right-wingnut extremists”. For her and the rest of the left any decisions that doesn’t go their way must be because of political bias on the part of the justices.

Robert P Jones, founder and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “What we’re seeing is a desperate power grab as the sun is setting on white Christian America. In the courts, instead of moving slowly and systematically, it’s a lurch.”

Jones added: “In the meantime we’re going to be left with essentially an apartheid situation in the US where we’re going to have minority rule by this shrinking group that’s been able to seize the levers of power, even as their cultural democratic representation in the country shrinks.”

How do you reach a person such as this? How do you begin a conversation when she can’t even see us as people? How do we bring our country back together before the blood flows?