Category: Gun control

Intentional?

Once again, Gov. Newsom is blaming “gun crime” on guns rather than criminals:

Newsom blames guns for Sacramento mass shooting: ‘Scourge of gun violence’

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth covering again: Liberals seem to be allowing crime – so-called “gun crime” in particular – to increase by not prosecuting criminals, then blaming guns for the problem. The goal: repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

These were criminals. Want proof? A stolen gun was found at the scene. And you really think that more gun laws would have prevented this shooting event? Really?

UPDATE: Of course it was CRIMINALS with guns, not law-abiding citizens, who committed these heinous shootings. The first arrest is of an ex-felon who was charged with – wait for it – “assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon“.

Sacramento police make first arrest in mass shooting that left six dead, a dozen wounded

Ok, Batman, so riddle me this: What gun law not already in place in California would have stopped this convicted felon from acquiring and using a firearm? They were ALREADY banned from possession firearms due to their past violent behavior, and yet they carried one anyway BECAUSE CRIMINALS DON”T OBEY THE LAW!

More laws targeting or punishing law-abiding citizens simply won’t work because these are CRIMINALS who ignore the law – both those who supply the guns and those who use them. We need to simply lock them up if we want it to stop.

Punishing the innocent

We’ll just make law-abiding gun owners pay instead of locking up violent, gun-toting criminals. Yeah, that’s the ticket… yeah…

San Jose approves gun owners liability insurance

I love this quote from the article:

“The proposals include two requirements for gun owners that no city or state in the U.S. has ever implemented: the purchase of liability insurance and the payment of annual fees to fund violence-reduction initiatives,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo wrote in an op-ed with the Los Angeles Times last week. [emphasis mine]

By definition, law abiding gun owners (like the ones who would comply with this new law) have nothing to do with criminal behavior or gun crime. So why should they be singled out to pay for violence reduction initiatives, rather than the entire population? Particularly when it was the majority vote that put the politicians in power who now refuse to hold criminals accountable for their violent actions?

Here’s another doozy:

On Monday, Liccardo explained at a news conference that the proposal intends to better compensate shooting victims and their familes, as well as make it harder for people who aren’t willing to follow the rules to own a firearm, KTVU reported. [emphasis mine]

But the majority of criminals who use guns in the commission of their crimes are already prohibited from owning a firearm (even Politifact concedes this point).  In addition, these criminals are going out to shoot people – an act of far greater legal consequence than ignoring this new requirement. To believe that this law will somehow “…make it harder for people who aren’t willing to follow the rules to own a firearm…”, in particular criminals, is laughable. They won’t even notice.

How about this:

“While gun rights advocates argue that gun owners should not have to pay a fee to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms,” Liccardo said, via the report, the “2nd Amendment does not require the taxpayers to subsidize folks to own guns.”

But the taxpayer is not subsidizing law-abiding gun owners – they are instead subsidizing criminals. This is like blaming banks for bank robberies, automobiles for drunk drivers, airplanes for hijackings  – oh, and guns for gun crime. It’s the criminals, stupid!

Well, at least it is clear and convincing evidence that California liberals hate gun owners more than they hate criminals. Who’d have thought?

Why I am a 2nd Amendment supporter

The headline spells it out:

Chicago police alert residents to burglaries targeting senior citizens

How would your unarmed parents defend themselves from a sudden attack by a group of criminals? Sans a reasonable means of defending oneself, and with such a sudden attack precluding police assistance, all it would take to overpower them is someone stronger – armed or not.

I’ve said it before but it is worth saying again: without a way to fend off a physically or numerically superior attacker we are at the whim of any brute or mob that happens by.

There is a reason why the firearm has been referred to as “the great equalizer”…

Flip a coin

I’ve said it before (here and here), but I’ll say it again: abortion rights and gun control are the flip side of the same coin. The left uses restrictions on gun rights to punish the right, and the right uses restrictions on abortion to punish the left.

Want proof? Here’s a doozy:

Gavin Newsom says he’ll use Texas abortion law as model for gun-control measure

More [fill in blank] control laws!

When Darrel Brooks drove his Ford SUV into a crowd of Christmas revelers, did anyone blame the vehicle and call for more “vehicle control laws”? No; of course not. We blamed the criminal, and the courts that freed him on bail.

When more than 10,000 people were killed in 2019 due to alcohol-impaired drivers, did anyone blame the alcohol and call for more “alcohol control laws”? Or blame the automobiles and call for more “vehicle control laws”? No; of course not. We blamed the drivers and called for higher DUI penalties

When a student obtains his father’s firearm and allegedly attacks classmates at his high school, did anyone blame the firearm and call for more “gun control laws”? Yes; of course they did. No need to blame the perpetrator, or the parents or school officials who failed to intervene.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald made the following statement after the arrest of Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old suspect in the Oxford High School shooting in Michigan:

McDonald added that the “the only thing I can do as the prosecutor is ensure that I will do everything I can to prosecute this case and pursue justice for these victims.”

“But also to speak out and say that we need better gun laws,” she said. 

Really, Karen? You fail to cite any relevant facts regarding how this young man acquired his father’s firearm or what caused his behavior, but you are certain that additional gun laws would have prevented this tragedy? Just what new gun law would you suggest, Karen, given the lack of facts surrounding this case? What if the firearm was acquired in violation of an existing law – a law that was simply ignored by the perpetrator? How would an additional gun control law have impacted this tragedy under those circumstances, Karen? It would be really nice if gun control pundits like Karen McDonald would actually investigate root causes before blaming the inanimate object used in the commission of a heinous crime.

While few details regarding this crime have been released, some are critical and suggest that additional gun control laws would have had little impact. For instance, it has been alleged that the shooter posted photos on social media of the firearm purchased just days earlier by his father,  referring to the gun as “…my new beauty…”.  The implication is that it was purchased for him by his father; this is bolstered by additional comments made by law enforcement officials:

Bouchard said: “It’s my understanding that this was a recent weapon purchased, that he had been shooting with it and had posted pictures of a target and the weapon.”

My question would be: is this a legal possession? Can a father buy his 15 year old son a semi-automatic pistol in Michigan, and if not isn’t that a violation of existing gun laws? If this turns out to be the case, wouldn’t charging the father with a violation of such an existing law be more productive than claiming – without any facts to support the claim – that “…we need better gun laws…”?

Other details leading up to the shooting raise additional concerns. For instance the alleged shooter’s parents were called to the school just hours before the shooting:

Sheriff Mike Bouchard later told reporters that the boy’s parents had been summoned to the school  just a few hours before the bloodshed. Bouchard wouldn’t discuss details of the behavior school officials were concerned about.

This suggests that the cause of this tragedy might have behavioral roots. Perhaps the school could have done more to recognize the threat or the circumstances leading up to the shooting. Perhaps laws concerning school actions with respect to or reporting of behavioral issues would be more beneficial than blaming the firearm.

The firearm was only the tool used to express the rage this young man felt. Before we blame the inanimate tool and demand more undefined “gun laws”, let’s investigate the root cause of this tragedy. At least then we’d be in a position to make fact-based decisions.

It’s the criminals, stupid.

Philadelphia recently suffered its 500th homicide:

55-year-old woman becomes Philadelphia’s 500th homicide victim

Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney has chosen to blame firearms:

He also called on lawmakers in Harrisburg to allow the city to pass more restrictive gun laws to keep weapons off the streets.

Uh… by definition, criminals do NOT follow the law… So how will more gun laws stop the criminal use of firearms? Won’ t such laws only impact law-abiding citizens?

“There are people making money selling these guns, making these guns, and the legislature, not the people behind me, don’t care. They don’t care how many people get killed. It’s ridiculous. And cities like Boston and New York that are not dealing with this problem the way we’re dealing with it, there are strict gun laws…we need to have some semblance of that.”

Blaming guns (and a profitable firearms industry) for gun violence in is like blaming cars (and a profitable automobile industry) for drunk driving deaths. It’s just plain stupid. If we really want to have an impact on so-called “gun crime”, then we need to lock up the criminals who use guns – same as we did for drunk drivers. This includes criminals awaiting trial for violent crimes involving firearms.

Bail is not only to ensure that those accused appear at trial; it is also to protect the public. Thanks to the Bail Reform Act of 1984 (upheld by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Salerno, 1987), bail may be denied for defendants awaiting trail for felonies involving firearms or whose release would otherwise endanger society. Criminals who use firearms in the commission of a crime should be considered dangerous to public safety – particularly repeat offenders. Low bail – or no bail at all – for these defendants is absurd.

Let’s make and enforce laws that actually impact criminals. How about we try that for awhile before we attack the firearms industry as a whole, or the rights of our law-abiding citizens?

WTF?

So, punish otherwise law-abiding citizens for even having the gall to own firearms, but when criminals use a firearm to commit a crime they get a walk? AYFKM??

California Democratic lawmakers look to remove penalty for possessing firearm during crime

Here’s a couple of examples – taxing law-abiding gun owners for the actions of criminals:

San Jose mayor rolls out new gun control proposal days after railyard mass shooting

Chicago reinstates gun and ammunition tax after court deems it unconstitutional

Rittenhouse verdict

The Rittenhouse verdict – not guilty on all counts – was the right verdict under the circumstances. We should be free to defend ourselves against those who wish to do us harm – including “peaceful” protestors.

I think the message the verdict sends is not that we want teenagers carrying rifles in public, but rather that we’re fed up with the lawlessness of left-wing protests. If you want to attack people or their property, be forewarned – people can and will defend themselves. I also think it sends the message that firearms are a suitable means of defense against gangs of violent thugs – as it should be. Firearms allow the weak or few to defend themselves against the strong or many. It’s no wonder they have been referred to as “the great equalizer“.

The reaction by the far-left was as expected – they protested (who’d have thought?).

Why law-abiding citizens should conceal-carry

An interesting quote from Alexis Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami, who was interviewed for the story:

“The onus is really on us as a collective because we can’t always rely on the police,” he said. “We have to rely on one another.”

I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I support will-issue concealed carry permit laws. If one of those riders had been a concealed carry permit holder, things might have gone quite differently – both for the criminal as well as the victim.

Punish law-abiding citizens…

…with onerous laws meant to restrict their 2nd amendment rights, but do nothing to the criminals who use firearms in the commission of their crimes? Oh, wait… it’s California. Duh:

California Democratic lawmakers look to remove penalty for possessing firearm during crime

However, if a law-abiding citizen possesses a firearm but commits no crime – well, that’s going to send them away for life.