Tag Archives: ban

Never let a crisis go to waste

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Some events are so big that they cause even the most disparate political forces to agree. After the 9/11 attacks there was a ‘honeymoon’ period where both sides agreed on various things that they normally would not agree upon. These periods always eventually dissipate into the usual partisanship, but not before the newly-discovered-common-ground crowd has done their damage (cough*PatriotAct*cough).

Early reports are saying this kid used an AR-platform of some kind…I’m betting .223 and not something with more zip like a .308 or Creedmoor). And, if it was an AR platform, this might be the impetus that gets us back into Assault Weapons Ban II.

No one condones assassination as a form of remediation in domestic politics. At least, not officially. And no one is going to come out and support that sort of nonsense (well, maybe a few people here and there). So, when some schmuck like Schumer, or one of his fellow travelers, starts clamoring about how ‘both sides must unite to stop this terrible threat’…there might be that ‘unity across the aisle’ moment. After all, if you couch the whole thing in the idea of ‘preserving democracy’ by getting rid of these ‘assassination weapons’ and you don’t support the program…well, then the terrorists assassins have won.

“Never let a crisis go to waste” is the mantra over there. You watch…it won’t be long before this event is used as the impetus to push for some sort of gun/magazine ban. As more details about this event come out you’ll see the pointless questions like “where did the shooter get the gun” and that sort of thing. Then it’ll be a shift into ‘gun safety’ measures with laws being proposed that no politician will be able to oppose without looking like they’re condoning this behavior.

Or maybe not. I’ve been wrong before. But what Im not wrong about is that there are going to be people in Washington who are going to grab this opportunity and public outrage to try and push forward an agenda that might otherwise have not gotten much traction.Probably about guns, but other things are possible too.

I’ll be curious to see what gun/mag vendors pricing and inventory looks like over the next weeks.

Article – ‘I feel terrified’: Inventor of ‘Glock switch’ technology says he regrets creation

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When Jorge Leon invented at the age of 22 a small device that turns Glock pistols into fully automatic weapons, he said he intended it to be used for the good of society, to help the military and police in his native country of Venezuela.

But 26 years after being granted a U.S. patent for his “fire selector system,” U.S. law enforcement officials say his creation is flooding the streets of American cities with these outlawed machine guns and many have fallen into the hands of teenage criminals indiscriminately using them to wreak havoc on communities both large and small.

“After seeing and reading about all those deaths, those unnecessary deaths of youngsters, of police officers, of broken families, I don’t feel nice about that, I don’t feel good,” Leon, now 59, told ABC News. “I regret filing that patent because … my technology, which was very well protected at that time, is free for everybody.”

It’s not that I’m a person prone to being suspicious, but rather that I “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.” The article here makes the case that the Glock pistol is inherently flawed in that it is easy to convert it to full-happy by the addition of a simple ‘drop-in’ part. The recourse, the article goes on to say, is to force Glock to re-design it’s product to prevent the easy installation of such devices.

Ok, lets look at that more closely. First step, whip the public into a frenzy over the perceived issue and put out a proposal to solve it. In this case the issue is illegal full auto Glocks and the solution is to force a redesign. Second step, ?????. Third step, neutered 10-shot Glocks.

What I mean by all that is that let’s say that, by some bizarre political or legal machination, they actually force Glock to make a change to all subsequent products to prevent the ‘easy’ conversion to full auto. What happens to the millions of Glocks out there that pre-date that design change? Hmmm. Well, a full-auto gun is fairly useless if it can only hold ten rounds, so a magazine ban seems a ‘reasonable, commonsense’ way to ‘de-fang’ the older ‘readily convertible’ Glocks. Or they get redefined as ‘machine guns’ because of their ‘readily convertible’ nature. Or there’s a national recall to existing guns to have them altered to the new design. Or..or…or.

Point is, if they whip up enough hysteria, which this article seems designed to do, it’ll create the casus belli needed to ‘do something’ about that ‘Glock problem’. You have to demonize something (or someone) in the eyes of the public so that when you do come down hard on it, everyone nods their head and says ‘Well, yes, of course.’ We saw this with the Assault Weapons Ban. Folks were buying AR’s and AK’s for years before the media suddenly made the ‘evil black rifle’ into the new cause celebre for the gun prohibition movement.

But, maybe I’m just seeing boogeymen where none exist. It’s possible…Im often wrong about these things.

 

Article – The Guns Were Said to Be Destroyed. Instead, They Were Reborn.

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Remember, kids…when the other side doesn’t like something that our side does that is perfectly legal..well..thats a “loophole”.

When Flint, Michigan, announced in September that 68 assault weapons collected in a gun buyback would be incinerated, the city cited its policy of never reselling firearms.

“Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” Mayor Sheldon Neeley said. “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”

But Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon.

This is interesting because I’ve done a bunch of business with Gunbusters on GunBroker. Theyre an excellent source for getting spare parts for a gun ‘just in case’. The pearl-clutching in this article is priceless. If recycling gun parts is somehow a safety problem for the public, then by extension the purchase of spare parts through other channels should be just as much of a (non)problem. That is, of course, the direction this will eventually go to as more and more parts will be considered controlled or, more likely, prohibited from distribution through various means….social pressure on carriers, advertisers, etc.

The culture war never stopped, guys…sometimes it just quiets a bit as folks reposition themselves in their trenches.

 

Article – An AR-15 ammunition factory built to supply the military shifted to commercial sales and is now tied to more than a dozen mass shootings

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While The Times found that the “vast majority” of rounds sold from Lake City to retailers end up in the hands of law-abiding citizens, they have also shown up in a number of mass shootings.

Rounds from Lake City have been tied to at least a dozen mass shootings, including the 2012 Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and the 2017 Las Vegas Strip mass shooting, the deadliest in US history, the report says.

Gotta boil that water nice and slow so the frog doesn’t notice.

Its not enough to keep banging the drum about ‘assault weapons’ being bad. You have to keep that idea at the front of the public’s mind or you lose the narrative. So the media (or the people controlling them) keep the beat going….AR-15’s bad, AR-15 magazines bad, and now, AR-15 ammo bad. Do it long enough and hard enough and even the Fudds will start in with their ‘no one needs an AR15’ spiel. (Jim Zumbo has entered the chat.) [Sidenote: we now have .35 and .40 caliber rifle cartridges for using the AR as a hunting platform…so the notion of ‘not suitable for hunting’ has kinda evaporated. Although, honestly, an AR-10 has always been just fine for hunting.]

This is just more coordinated media manipulation to keep the fire burning that we need a 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: The Next Generation. As always, while you may not be able to prevent a ban you can be prepared for it. All it takes is resolute will and some money. Skip the jet skit, put off the new 72″ TV till next year, drive the clunker for another year…..take the money and buy what you need and what you think you’ll need.

Did LC ammo show up at ‘mass shootings’? Maybe. So what? LC probably cranks out millions and millions of rounds per year. The percentage of that ammo used in crimes? A fraction of a fraction of a percentage….just like ‘assault weapons’ themselves.

Go buy another AR. Go buy another dozen mags. Go buy another case of ammo. Even if they never ban them again you’ll still be ahead of the game just in terms of beating inflation and future price hikes.

Just another ‘beware the coming bans’ post

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Unless you’ve been under a rock the last week, you know some guy in Maine (of all places) went sideways and killed about twenty people before taking his own life. As usually happens after these events, the usual crowd wiped the blood onto their faces and began wailing about ‘commonsense’ and ‘reasonable’ restrictions on…well..whatever they think was at fault.

To be fair, the administration really has it’s hands full right now and is probably not interested in getting into a domestic policy quagmire while it’s in the midst of a couple foreign policy quagmires. But…I’ve been wrong before.

But if they do get some traction on their usual ban-dwagon, you don’t want to be caught unprepared. It’s been 19 years since the sunset of the much-despised ‘Assault Weapons Ban’.  If you bought on pistol magazine and one rifle magazine each month (a very easy goal) since then, you’d have about 228 pistol mags and 228 rifle mags…an amount that almost everyone would agree is a comfortable amount to have.

And if you bought one ‘evil’ rifle every year, again not an outrageous or difficult goal, you’d have 19 AR’s in the safe.

But some people just will not learn. It seems like every time some whackjob shoots up a 7-11 and the media starts their campaign about ‘high capacity magazines’ there are people who sudenly think they need to buy. Dude…you should have had your magazine issues settled shortly after the ban expired. I encounter way to many people who think that “Oh, I have a dozen mags for my AR. Thats plenty.” That is wildly shortsighted thinking that fails to account for what perils the future holds. I’m not going to elaborate about that because I’ve covered it elsewhere on this blog more times than I can recall.

TL;DR for todays post: one of these days, these gun/mag bans will come back and you don’t want to be caught with your pants down. Stack it deep. And if you really want a positive habit to develop, buy one pistol mag per month, and one rifle mag per month. They are money in the bank. (Not that keeping your money in the bank is a good idea, but you get my meaning.)

Forewarned is forearmed

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Literally, in this case.

President Biden said in a speech on Wednesday that he’s going to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines “come hell or high water.”

Biden made the comments at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on Wednesday night.

“I know it may make some of you uncomfortable,but that little state above me, Delaware is one of them, hasthe highest rate, one of the highest rates of gun ownership. But guess what? We’re going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water and high capacity magazines. When we did it last time to reduce mass deaths,” Biden said. 

Look, you’re a smart guy, right? You know exactly what you need to do. Go do it. Repeatedly.

Even a broken calendar is right once a year

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Inflation is still at levels not seen in generations, the Drums Of Ban are beating louder after some shootings in California, and that darn Chinese-caused pandemic keeps hanging in there. Just another day here in clownworld.

I need to do a detailed inventory of magazines. I know how much I have recorded in the Preponomicon, but every so often I pick up a case or two of Glock or AR mags and just heave the box on top of the pile and forget about it. The spreadsheets say I have several hundred mags but it’s probably off by two or three hundred mags.

In addition to the whole will-they-or-wont-they regarding magazines and ”assault weapons’, I need to pick up a couple spare sets of armour. For some reason, the colossal idiots that come up with these gun bans tend to lump body armour into the mix. It’s only a matter of time before the ability to own things like body armour becomes known as ‘a loophole’ that needs to be closed with ‘reasonable’ and ‘common sense’ ‘safety laws’.

Isn’t it fascinating how the language is evolving in this highly politicized environment we’re living in. A gun ban/prohibition is a ‘gun safety’ issue. And it’s always described as ‘reasonable’ and ‘common sense’. Thus, if this ‘gun safety’ law is reasonable and common sense, opposition to it is unreasonable and nonsensical. The fact that you were allowed to own these items isn’t because there was no law preventing it, but rather because there was a ”loophole’ in the law that didn’t keep you from it.

Words have meaning. When you control the narrative…the terms and definitions…you can craft the narrative to favor your cause (or disfavor someone elses). This is why those two buzzwords ‘common sense’ and ‘reasonable’ are always thrown into any sound bite about new legislation.

If you’ve read the blog for any amount of time, you know that I’ve been predicting a new ‘assault weapons’ ban practically since the last one expired. I genuinely believe it’s coming, but on a long enough timeline every prediction has a 100% fulfilment rate.

Still… I very seldom feel foolish buying ‘extra’ mags or ‘extra’ guns.

Article – Pressure mounts for credit card companies to track suspect gun sales

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A group of congressional Democrats is urging credit card companies to track suspect firearm and ammunition purchases as a means to identify and stop gun crime, according to a letter obtained by CBS News Thursday.

…

“The creation of a new [merchant category code] for gun and ammunition retail stores would be the first step towards facilitating the collection of valuable financial data that could help law enforcement in countering the financing of terrorism efforts,” the letter says.

A merchant category code, they wrote, “could make it easier for financial institutions to monitor certain types of suspicious activities including straw purchases and unlawful bulk purchases that could be used in the commission of domestic terrorist acts or gun trafficking schemes.”

By hook or by crook…

This was bandied about a few years ago, too. The moral of this story, other than that .gov needs to mind its own business, is that paying cash whenever possible is never a bad idea.

Toldja so

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A while back I posted about how the people in the Great White North were moving to classify AR uppers as controlled parts.

Canadian party leaders taking a refreshment break outside of parliamentary chambers….

I astutely and correctly predicted that it was simply a matter of time before the weasels at ATFE pushed for the same. I also predicted that the music was winding down  for the arm brace party. Look, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to to see that when:

a) you challenge ATFE in court about AR receivers not meeting the legal definition of receivers…and win…

and

b) you make ‘arm braces’ that are, let’s be real, not really ‘arm braces’ and sell them by the trainload….

ATFE is gonna think “Hmmm…maybe we should do something about that.” All the clamoring about “Constitutionality” and “will not comply!” doesn’t change the boots-on-the-ground facts: .gov will do what it wants and then address the legalities later. You may be proven right later, but you’ll be warming up a cell as you wait.

I expect that what will happen is that ‘arm braced’ pistols will be allowed to be papered as SBR’s with the $200 tax waived. This is similar to what happened when ATFE reclassified the Street Sweeper and USAS-12 shotguns. For the fella that has a bucket of stripped $29 poverty pony lowers sitting around, its an opportunity to ‘make’ a dozen SBR’s and save some money.

We had a relatively quiet four years under Trump in regards to gun legislation. Not perfect, but not terrible. Only a short-sighted idiot could possibly believe that the Biden people weren’t going to try and push the ‘gun control’ agenda more aggressively.

So…what next? Well, if you thought you were beating the rush by buying a ton of stripped lowers you may wanna fire up your Visa card and order a corresponding amount of stripped uppers….just in case.

Keeping eyes and ears open

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Hmmm….

President Joe Biden will unveil a package of executive actions to curb gun violence on Thursday — a step that is likely to be cheered by increasingly impatient advocates despite being relatively modest in scope.
…..
Among the actions Biden will take will be to direct the Department of Justice to begin, within 30 days, the process of requiring buyers of so-called ghost guns — homemade or makeshift firearms that lack serial numbers — to undergo background checks and, within 60 days, regulating concealed assault-style firearms, according to the White House.

And from WSJ:

The Justice Department has 60 days to propose a new rule that would restrict arm braces that are often used with AR-15-style pistols, which are smaller versions of AR-15-style rifles. The braces are designed to stabilize the pistols, but can also be used like shoulder stocks, effectively transforming them into short-barreled rifles, which are heavily restricted under federal law, according to gun-control advocates.

And just like that….I spent a lot of money…again.