United Liberty

You get it, right? Dianne Feinstein doesn’t like guns.  I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say, “Yes Dianne, we get it.”  Feinstein has a history with guns.  You see, she became mayor of San Francisco when Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered by city supervisor Dan White.  This is a point that Feinstein uses to leverage her position on guns into being somehow more moral than that of gun rights advocates.

Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz asked her if she would be as quick to circumvent the First and Fourth Amendments as she is to gut the Second.  Her response [emphasis added]:

“I’m not a sixth grader,” said responded. “Senator, I’ve been on this committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode. In Sandy Hook, youngsters were dismembered. Look, there are other weapons.”

“I’ve been up — I’m not a lawyer, but after 20 years I’ve been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn’t mean that weapons of war and the Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here.”

Feinstein is saying that she saw Milk and Moscone’s bodies, and that is at least half true.  She is the one who discovered Milk’s body, and she might have seen Moscone’s.  However, she goes on to imply that they were killed with “these weapons”, which is complete bull. Dan White, who murdered Milk and Moscone, used a revolver, the one weapon type that Feinstein is doing nothing about.

We all knew it was coming.  Well, it’s here.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) continues her jihad against so-called “assault weapons” by introducing the bill she warned the world was coming earlier today.

The bill, as ugly as we expected, seeks to ban scores of firearms including all types of AK and AR pattern rifles.  A number of shotguns and pistols are also including in that list.  Of course, Feinstein and her fellow gun jihadists believe they’re fighting the good fight:

During the press event at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Democrats described these firearms as “dangerous military-style assault weapons.” The bill would also ban high-capacity ammunition feeding devices that can hold more than 10 rounds.

Feinstein said the country’s “weak” gun laws allow massacres like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occur.

“Getting this bill signed into law will be an uphill battle, and I recognize that — but it’s a battle worth having,” Feinstein said in literature handed to reporters at the Thursday event.

Feinstein is right that it’ll be an uphill battle for the bill.  However, Feinstein has to know just how little of a chance this bill has.

The bill will also essentially turn all currently possessed firearms into Class III weapons.  That is the same classification of guns as fully automatic machine guns.  Now, this will mean that those AK and AR pattern rifles are about to soar in value should a bill like this actually pass.

Dear Piers Morgan,

We get it.  You, a British citizen and a subject of the Crown, are not a supporter of gun rights.  This is something we understand perfectly well.

However, I feel that as a fellow journalist, I need to reach out and let you know that I’m on to your little tricks.  Frankly, if this is the best you’ve got, maybe you should rethink your position on gun rights…or at least quit making it such a point on your show.

The first trick was to shout down reasonable debate when you had Larry Pratt on your show.  Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, went on your show to have a reasonable discussion, and you shout him down with tactics more akin to Bill O’Reilly’s.  Every time he opened his mouth to counter your points, you were rude and drowned him out.

Time and time again, you called Pratt names like “stupid,” while countering with no facts of your own.  You were as unprofessional as I have ever seen, and with Kieth Olbermann and O’Reilly still in my memory, that’s saying something.

Last night, you had Alex Jones on your show.  Ostensibly, it was about the petition to have you deported.  For the record, I did not sign it and did not support it.  Freedom of speech is freedom for all, or else it’s freedom for none.    Jones started it, and you had him on your show.  Unsurprisingly, the topic went over to gun control.

Shootings will continue to make headlines.  Recent incidents such as the Aurora, Colorado shooting and events Friday at the Empire State Building continue to put guns and gun rights under a spotlight.  One of the latest columns I’ve come across was spawned from the Huffington Post.  In it, writer Marian Wright Edelman says she thinks it’s time for “common sense gun control”.

Every time another mass shooting happens in the United States, the debate over gun control comes fleetingly to the forefront — until political fear paralyzes courage and action. Inevitably, some people repeat the argument that the solution to preventing mass shootings is not better gun control laws — even control of assault weapons, which have no place in nonmilitary hands — but getting even more Americans armed. The apparent fantasy result would be something straight out of Hollywood where every single time a bad person stands up with a gun a good person with their own gun would quickly rise up out of the crowd, shoot the bad person, and save the day.

Edelman spends a good bit of time talking about mass shootings, invoking not just Aurora but also Columbine, Virginia Tech, and a host of others.  After all, we must prevent these horrible events.

I don’t think anyone believes that these events aren’t horrible.  However, I want to point out some things to Edelman.  After all, she is writing from a position of emotion, rather than actual facts.

Based on this from Cato’s Roger Pilon, apparently, the National Rifle Association only cares about some parts of the Bill of Rights:

NPR ran a story this morning, “NRA Targets One Of Its Own In Tenn. Race,” that nicely illustrates the perils of single-issue politics, although you’d never learn the principle of the matter from the NPR account. It seems that the NRA has launched a $75,000 ad campaign against state Rep. Debra Maggart, a long-time NRA member and avid gun-owner who a year ago had an “A+” rating from the NRA. Her sin? She and several other Tennessee Republican officials opposed a bill that would have allowed employees to keep guns in their cars while parked in their private employers’ parking lots.

The NRA’s Chris Cox, who’s spearheading this political vendetta and, in the process, is supporting Maggart’s tea-party backed opponent, invokes both “our First Amendment right to assemble to petition our government” and, of course, the Second Amendment, seemingly oblivious to the fact that neither is relevant here. In fact, the issue could not be simpler: individuals, including employers, have a right to determine the conditions on which others may enter their property.

When one talks about the left, it’s important to note that the left is a large group and not everyone on the left is in lockstep on every issue.  However, there are a large number of people on the left that have the ideological consistency of a turnip…and I apologize to any turnips that are insulted at the comparison.

The most recent example stems from Team USA shooter Corey Cogdell, an Olympic trap shooter who is in London right now representing the US.  Cogdell, like a lot of competitive shooters, is also a hunter.  Recently, she shared some photographs of animals she’s taken while in the field.

With me so far?  Good, because a report over a Twitchy.com shows how “tolerant” some on the left can be with regard to hunting. Screenshots after screenshots of individuals wishing Cogdell would “shoot [herself] in the knees” and declaring her a “waste of oxygen and an embarassment to the human race.”

One particularly stood out to me:

What a f***ing waste! WTFIs wrong with ppl?cruel!! These ppl need to be shot deheaded and posted on a wall

Now, I can understand that not everyone shares my views of hunting.  For the record, I am a hunter as well.  I understand Cogdell’s love of hunting, I really do.  The vast majority of hunters either eat the game they take, or they donate it to programs like Hunters For The Hungry which uses wild game to feed needy families.  While I have little doubt that they exist, I don’t know a single hunter - trophy hunter or otherwise - that doesn’t eat what they kill.

The recent Colorado theater shootings made the news again – tragic, visceral. But it seems that any discussion of guns revolves around a very strong selection bias, where all we see is violence, school shootings, highway snipers. This leaves the conversation incomplete.

These shootings constitute the “seen”. But what if—like economic processes—the issue of gun violence and gun control also has a “not seen” component?  And what if the “not seen” is of equal importance as the “seen”?  This recalls 19th century French political economist Frederic Bastiat’s famous essay, “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen”, where Bastiat critiqued contemporary economic thinking by noting that for every economic process that is “seen” there are other equally important processes taking place that are “not seen” (his famous “broken window fallacy”).

There is therefore opportunity to stop viewing the gun control debate only through Constitutionality or even the “seen” and rather, to also address the “unseen.” Currently, most gun arguments are centered on the 2nd Amendment, especially its use of the word “militia.” Did the Founders purposely use “militia” in order to confer only a “collective” right to bear arms, or was the Amendment meant for individuals? The Supreme Court answered this question in its landmark Heller vs District of Columbia case, when the majority found that the Second Amendment indeed applied to individuals.

James Holmes is an evil man.  Sick?  Quite possibly, but evil none the less.  The same can be said of Jared Loughner who is responsible for the Tuscon shooting.  The two men, and the events they started, also have something else in common.  Both sparked the debate regarding high capacity magazines.

First, let’s clarify something for the non-gun folks who may be reading.  Most semi-automatic weapons are designed around specific magazines.  For an AR-15 or an AK-47, that is a 30 round magazine.  For a 9 mm pistol, it’s usually in the neighborhood of 15 rounds.  Those are properly considered standard capacity magazines, not high capacity.

Now that the bit of nomenclature is out of the way, I know that opponents of guns don’t see any reason why someone needs so many rounds in their magazine.  Well, let me touch on that one.  I probably don’t.  On that note though, neither do the vast majority of police officers in this country who could legally secure these so-called “hi capacity” magazines during the Assault Weapon Ban.  Law enforcement was exempt from the ban, yet how many officers legally discharge their firearms during the course of their career, not counting range time?  Very, very few.

Despite what the movies tell us, police officers find themselves needing to discharge their weapons remarkably few times.  Most police officers go their entire careers and never fire their weapons. The same is true for most private gun owners as well.

After a tragedy, there are things that happen.  Friends and families of the deceased try to come to terms with the event, journalists try to learn what they can about the event and the people affected by it, and if the tragedy involved a madman with a gun then a politician will scream for gun control.

This time, we have none other than President Obama calling for the gun control:

“A lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals,” Mr. Obama said at the annual National Urban League convention in New Orleans. “They belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities.”

…

“Every day, the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater,” Mr. Obama said. “For every Columbine or Virginia Tech,there are dozens gunned down on the streets of Chicago or Atlanta, here in New Orleans. Violence plagues the biggest cities, but it also plagues the smallest towns.”

I guess he thinks he can get it passed now?  After all, four years ago he said he wouldn’t try to pass gun control legislation because he didn’t figure he had the votes.  Now, he has lost control of one chamber of Congress, with a lot of politicians still battling to keep their seats.  Gun control is usually a loser issue for Democrats.

However, Obama clearly believes that the Aurora massacre will swing things his way.  He’s using the word “gun owners” to convey the idea that the very people who will be regulated share his belief that an “AK-47” belongs in a soldier’s hands.  Well, that may be true in a few places, but I haven’t met too many of those gun owners.

New York Mayor Michael “Ban the Big Gulp” Bloomberg is at it again.  This time, he’s voicing some ideas that are, quite frankly, beyond the idiocy he routinely spouts off.  This time, he told CNN’s Piers Morgan that he thinks police officers should go on strike until guns are outlawed.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN’s Piers Morgan last night that he doesn’t “understand why police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say we’re going to go on strike, we’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”

First, Bloomberg is actually asking law enforcement officers - you know, the people who can actually arrest criminals, take them to jail, and all that - to go on strike to affect political change in this country?  Really? That’s just downright terrifying…if any police officers were willing to actually do it.

The reason that it’s scary is that many people obey laws simply because of a fear of going to prison.  If there are no police due to a strike, then that deterent is no longer there.  Welcome to downright anarchy.  Bloomberg isn’t a complete idiot, despite his comments.  He knows this.  What he’s basically asking is that police use extortion techniques on the American people to affect change in gun laws.  Extortion happens to be a crime that police arrest people for!

But I’m sure Mayor Bloomberg won’t let that stop him.