Voting for Hillary?

Not a fan of Donald Trump but…

By Jeff Knox

(May 5, 2016) With Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for President, this is shaping up to be the ugliest presidential race in modern history, with the major parties putting up two of the most widely despised candidates ever fielded.  This situation is pretty astounding since neither of these candidates – or Bernie Sanders – should have logically been able to garner enough support to even be considered serious contenders.  But here we are with Hillary and the Donald as our presumptive candidates.  Barring some major development, one or the other is going to be the next President of the United States.

Before the dedicated Trump supporters start throwing rocks at me, let me suggest that only those who were on the Trump Train eleven months ago – and believed he was going to win – toss the first stones.  Is there anyone who actually fits that category?  Trump’s campaign seemed to be more an effort to shake things up and force some changes than to actually become the leader of the free world.  But there was something in his unapologetic bombast that struck a chord with disgruntled Americans, fed-up with carefully scripted politicians who refuse to take a stand or say what they really think.  The more some people were offended by what Trump had to say, the more other people said “Hell yeah!” 

Now, Trump has knocked off sixteen rivals and we are left with what many consider an unpalatable choice.  The problem is, there were never any real good choices available for GunVoters.  There were several, like Chris Christie, George Pataki, and John Kasich that GunVoters rejected out of hand.  Others offered some good qualities, but none offered a strong, support-worthy package.  Most though, were marginally acceptable, so most GunVoters waited and watched as Hillary marched toward her coronation as the Queen of the Democrat Party and Donald Trump crushed all challengers.

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The Democrats’ “Australian-style” solution

By Jeff Knox

(April 27, 2016) Hillary Clinton recently suggested that, while the Second Amendment is important and should be “respected,” there’s no reason we can’t implement “reasonable, commonsense gun safety measures.”  But both she and Barack Obama, along with other prominent Democrats, have invoked England and Australia as models America should consider adopting.  Since we keep hearing this “commonsense” suggestion, let’s look at what exactly “Australian-style” gun control looks like.

First, remember that Australia is an island nation with an area not much smaller than the U.S., but a total population less than Texas.  Some 85% of Australians live within 30 miles of the coast, mostly in large urban areas, making it among the most urbanized nations in the world.  It is also one the only countries in the “free world” that does not have a formal Bill of Rights – and certainly no recognized right to bear arms.  Restrictive firearm laws have long been a staple in Australia, which began as a penal colony where Great Britain sent its criminals and indigents. 

By the 1950s, most of Australia’s states had instituted some form of licensing and registration rules, but it wasn’t until the 1980s, as Australia was becoming more urbanized, that gun control began to be a national political issue.  The calls for more gun control were initially fueled, not by serious crime issues in Australia, but by debates over gun laws in the U.S.  Then a series of high-profile shooting incidents between 1984 and 1995 raised the temperature of the debate, and the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, following close on the heels of the Dunblane Massacre in Scotland, caused the pot to boil over.

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Slow & Tedious: The blueprint for weathering scandals

By Jeff Knox

(April 21, 2016) Since December, 2010, the government program known as Operation Fast and Furious has morphed into a program that could be accurately labeled as Operation Slow and Tedious.  The objective is to delay exposure of the truth until that exposure has no political or personal impact on the various players involved.

Efforts to get at the truth of the scandal got a boost in January when an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that thousands of documents subpoenaed by congressional investigators could not be withheld under claims of executive privilege. In keeping with the Slow and Tedious strategy, the Department of Justice finally released a large block of the documents three months later on a Friday afternoon in April, but continues to withhold many others. 

The recent document dump supports speculation that then Attorney General, Eric Holder, knew more about the ill-conceived gunwalking operation than he has claimed, and that he and other high-level DOJ officials actively worked to conceal details of the operation from Congress and the public.  Emails released earlier in the investigation indicate that White House advisor, Valerie Jarrett, gave guidance in the cover-up, but so far, none of the recent documents provide a direct link to the White House.  What they do show is a concerted effort to keep the details of the operation under wraps for political reasons.  Had these documents been made public when they were originally subpoenaed, they could have had a serious negative impact on Obama’s reelection campaign, and might have prevented implementation of new regulations requiring gun dealers in Border States to report information about purchasers of semi-auto rifles.  By delaying the release until now, those political consequences have been avoided, but there are other potential consequences that the administration is ducking.  Recent criminal charges filed against government officials in the Flint, Michigan water scandal are a reminder that politicians and bureaucrats might not be beyond the reach of the law.  So far, no one has paid a significant price for their roles in Fast and Furious, and the administration clearly wants to keep it that way.

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Armed Worship

Mixing God and guns.

By Jeff Knox

(April 13, 2016) Lawful concealed carry and religion intersected in the news recently as Mississippi enacted a law to “allow” churches to form church security committees for the protection of the congregation, and, with training, for security committee members to carry concealed guns.  Previous Mississippi law prohibited concealed carry in a church.  The reaction was swift and shrill, with predictions of blood in the aisles.  Of course experience of other states proves the hysteria unfounded.  Congratulations to Mississippi for expanding liberty.

Laws banning guns from houses of worship violate the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution.  The First Amendment prohibits government from making any law regarding the establishment or free exercise of religion.  This has been liberally interpreted to forbid any sort of favoritism for one religious doctrine over another.  A blanket prohibition on bearing arms in houses of worship favors a doctrine of pacifism over doctrines of preparedness and righteous defense of innocent life.

Constitutional issues aside, carrying a gun at church raises important questions, both doctrinal and practical.  At the highest level, it’s worth pointing out that very few religions preach total pacifism or passivity in the face of a threat.  No matter what denomination or creed, doctrinal questions should be worked out between individuals, church leadership, and God.  Having the doctrine settled at the outset will help establish boundaries and can help dictate actions in the event of an incident.

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Shooter-Trash

It’s past time for shooters to clean up our act.

By Jeff Knox

(April 6, 2016) Over the past thirty years or so, gun owners have done a spectacular job of improving firearm safety habits.  By every measure, unintentional injuries involving firearms have gone down even as the number of guns has risen.  That fact is rarely reported in the general media, but it’s something gun owners can be proud of.  We are, by and large, responsible and safe.  But there is one big area where all shooters can improve how shooters and gun owners are perceived by the general public.  We need to be more conscientious about where we shoot, what we shoot at, and especially about cleaning up after ourselves.  We’ve all run across areas that have been trashed as informal shooting ranges.  The ground is covered with bullet-riddled boxes, cans, televisions, washing machines, broken glass, and a carpet of empty cases and shells, trees and cactus are shredded, and we all get the blame.   

Spent cases are an often neglected source of litter that shooters too frequently just leave, even if they clean up their targets.  The metallic cases are pretty inert, and fade from view as the shine weathers, but they should still be picked up.  Plastic shotgun hulls and wads are a bigger problem.  Not only are they unsightly, they can break down into some fairly nasty chemicals that we really don’t want leaching into our groundwater, giving our opponents ammunition to use against us. 

Much of the target trash is actually not generated by shooters, but rather simply dumped by others who don’t want to pay the fee at the county landfill.  Unfortunately, once the first would-be gunslinger fills an object with holes, the mess becomes shooter-trash and its existence will always be blamed on us.

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Give Us Ammunition!

Republicans need to provide votes.

By Jeff Knox

(March 29, 2016) As the Presidential primaries continue to unravel in the news, it seems that the main concern of Republican leaders in D.C. and around the country is stopping Donald Trump.  They seem incapable of seeing their own culpability in pushing Trump to the top of the ticket.  This is a trust and accountability issue, and the Republicans have failed miserably at earning trust and accepting responsibility for their actions and inactions.  If Republicans want to win the presidency – or any other offices – they need to earn support by highlighting the clear distinctions between the parties and the candidates, and by demonstrating to their core constituency that they are actually listening to them, not just the donor class.  That means going beyond promises to actually moving legislation, holding hearings, and taking votes.

Democrats have made gun control a central theme of their campaigns this year, so Republicans need to capitalize on that by demonstrating their commitment to individual rights.  They could easily do that by bringing Rob Bishop’s (R-UT) “Lawful Purpose and Self Defense Act,” H.R.2710, to the floor for a vote.  It’s a gun control reform that removes the onerous “sporting purpose” language from the Gun Control Act and squelches bureaucratic power over firearm imports and sales.  There’s no way Obama would sign it, but that’s not the objective.  While we would like to see the bill passed and enacted, its more important purpose this year would be to activate GunVoters, point up distinctions between R’s and D’s, give presidential candidates something to campaign on, force Obama to take a stand, and demonstrate to an important segment of the Republican base that their politicians are actually listening and responsive to them.  All of these things are beneficial to Republicans and harmful to Democrats, so why aren’t they doing it?  Votes on bills like H.R.2710 are ammunition in election season and it’s foolish of Republicans to deny that ammunition to our activists.

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The Roar of Freedom!

By Jeff Knox

(March 23, 2016) John Adams said that Independence Day should be “solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”  At the Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot, it’s Independence Day twice a year.  Nothing says “Freedom!” louder than a few hundred privately owned machine guns all firing at once, especially if they’re firing at exploding targets.  That’s exactly what happens every spring and fall in northwestern Arizona at the Big Sandy.  Participants bring guns of every type and size – machine guns, submachine guns, short-barreled rifles, conventional rifles, suppressors, cannons, artillery pieces, and even tanks on occasion – along with plenty of ammo – to shoot, show off, and celebrate the liberty this great nation was founded on.

Due to rampant media misinformation, members of the general public are often confused about civilian possession of machine guns, and even what a “machine gun” actually is.  A lot of folks think common, semi-automatic rifles and pistols are machine guns just because they look military.  Even many gun owners don’t understand that machine guns are perfectly legal to own in most states.  Ownership requires registration, background checks, and payment of hefty taxes under the National Firearms Act of 1934, or NFA.  Prior to passage of the NFA, you could buy a Thompson or other full-auto firearm at your local hardware store with no more restrictions than for buying a shovel. 

In 1986 the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act reformed the 1968 Gun Control Act.  As that bill passed into law, an amendment was tacked on freezing the NFA registry and effectively forbidding the sale of any new, full-auto guns to civilians.  The so-called “machine gun freeze” capped the total number of machine guns available to the civilian market to only those that were already registered with the federal government – about 175,000 in all.  The limited supply coupled with soaring demand drove prices for those guns through the roof, so now the cost of buying them is a bigger deterrent than the laws.

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NRA Says “No” to Garland

By Jeff Knox

(March 17, 2016) In an unusual move, the National Rifle Association released a statement of strong opposition to President Obama’s pick of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, on the same day Obama announced the nomination.

           Historically NRA has refrained from jumping in on presidential appointments until late in the confirmation process – if at all – and they’ve caught quite a bit of flak for this in recent years, including strong criticism from us at The Firearms Coalition.  When Obama named Eric Holder as his choice for Attorney General, we, along with many others in the rights community, pressed the NRA to oppose his confirmation.  NRA remained silent through the confirmation process, then promised that they would not grade Senators on the Holder vote.  They did send out letters expressing concerns about Holder and asking senators to keep their concerns in mind when voting, but since they were not scoring the votes, there was no power behind that request, and 6 out of 8 “A-Rated” senators on the Judiciary Committee voted in favor of confirmation. 

When Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the NRA refrained from commenting on the appointment until late in the process, issuing a last-minute pledge – after loud complaints about their inaction – to score the vote.  She was subsequently confirmed on an almost straight party line vote. 

Again, with the appointment of Elena Kagan, NRA waited to weigh in on the nomination until after Senate hearings, and although they did speak up a little earlier in the process than they had with Sotomayor, the threat of scoring the vote didn’t seem to have much commitment behind it.  Indeed, in subsequent elections, many “A-Rated” incumbents who had voted in favor of Sotomayor and Kagan, retained their “A” ratings from NRA.

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Firearm Truths Everyone Should Know

By Jeff Knox

(March 9, 2016) One of the problems in discussing guns and gun laws is the fact that many people don’t know what they’re talking about – especially among those advocating for stricter gun laws.  To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, it’s not so much that gun control advocates don’t know anything; it’s that so much of what they know is wrong.

Let’s review some facts about terminology frequently used regarding guns and gun laws.

1.       There is no such thing as an “assault weapon.”  Truth be told, marketers and the gun press of the 1980s bear some responsibility for creating and popularizing the term, but then it was picked up by the anti-rights lobby, and they’ve ridden it for all it’s worth.  Today it is liberally applied to any gun that someone thinks looks scary or militaristic.  Like beauty, “good” art, or pornography, what constitutes “assault weapon” is in the eye of the beholder.  So-called “assault weapons” are not machine guns, and the laws restricting “assault weapons” do not apply to machine guns.  Nonetheless, folks like Bloomberg, Feinstein, and a multitude of media outlets routinely suggest that the guns they are talking about when they mention “assault weapons” are fully-automatic machine guns. 

Before the atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the state of Connecticut had some of the toughest restrictions on “assault weapons” in the country.  That law didn’t prevent the murders.  After the tragedy, the state implemented additional restrictions – none of which would have prevented or mitigated the horror in any way had they been in effect prior to the attack.  Similarly, California has strict regulations regarding “assault weapons,” but these laws did not prevent or mitigate the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

2.       There is no “gun show loophole,” no “Internet loophole,” and no “private transfer loophole.”  When the Brady Background Check law was negotiated and passed, this issue was raised, and private transfers were specifically and intentionally exempted from the law.  That’s a feature, not a loophole. 

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Justice Thomas Breaks His Silence
Bad law still prevails

By Jeff Knox

(March 2, 2016) “One question…  This is a misdemeanor violation.  It suspends a constitutional right.  Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”

With that “one question,” two weeks after the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and one week after the unofficial anniversary of a decade of silence during oral arguments in the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas broke his inquisitional fast.  The question, and several follow-up questions along the same theme, obviously flustered the Assistant U.S. Solicitor General to whom the questions were addressed, and stunned court-watchers who have grown accustomed to the high court’s lone African American voice – and its most conservative – not being heard from the bench.

Beyond the novelty of Justice Thomas breaking his silence for the first time in 10 years, the topic of his questions also raised some eyebrows.  The case at hand, Voisine v. U.S., challenges the applicability of a federal law which makes it a felony for anyone ever convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor, to possess a firearm or ammunition.  The law, commonly known as the Lautenberg Amendment, specifies that it only applies to those DV misdemeanors which have, “as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon,” within a defined domestic relationship.  The petitioners contend that, because the state DV law under which they were convicted uses a broader definition for DV, which can include unintentional physical contact, that unless the charge specifies use of force or threats, as described in the Lautenberg law, the proscription of firearms cannot be legally applied.  Their petition goes on to challenge the constitutionality of the Lautenberg Amendment itself under the provisions of Article One’s ex post facto restrictions, and  the Second, Fifth, and Sixth amendments.

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