More Gun Control Looming for California

Last week I told you about a bill pending in California which would ban standard, lead-based bullets for all hunting statewide.  It’s a bad bill being pushed by radical anti-hunting groups like the Humane Society of the US and Defenders of Wildlife.  The ban on lead ammunition isn’t the only threat Californians are facing.  Other gun control bills pending would seriously impact California gun owners and those who would visit the state.  As I write this, there are four bills scheduled for an immediate vote in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.  From there they would go to the full Assembly for a vote, and then, potentially on to Governor Jerry Brown.

Some supporters of individual rights will roll their eyes at this report and suggest that California is a lost cause with the only solution for California gun owners being to move to a more gun-friendly state.  Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done, and those who do get out, leave those who can’t in an even worse situation than before.  More important, California is historically a proving ground for all manner of bad ideas and crazy schemes that eventually spread to the rest of the country.  Successfully stopping the lunacy in California reduces the chances of similar legislation being brought up in other states around the country.

 Here are the four bills the Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote on Friday, August 30: 

$11.      SB-47, outlawing guns with “bullet buttons.”  California currently restricts “assault weapons,” the definition of which includes a semi-auto with a readily removable magazine.  In order to have the most functional rifles allowed by law, California gun owners developed a magazine system that requires the use of a simple tool for removal.  This system is commonly referred to as a “bullet button” because the original versions could use the point of a bullet as the tool for removing the magazine.  Under SB-47, firearms currently fitted with a “bullet button” or similar system would be reclassified as “assault weapons,” banning future sales and transfers, requiring registration, and payment of a special tax.

$12.      SB-53, requiring that people acquire a permit to purchase before they can buy ammunition, and that all ammunition purchases be registered.  (An expensive recordkeeping nightmare.)

$13.      SB-374, classifying all semi-auto rifles that have any removable magazine or a magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds as “assault weapons,” banning future sales and transfers, and requiring that the firearms be registered and special taxes paid.

$14.      SB-396, banning the possession of any magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds.  This ban would include confiscation of the millions of the previously owned, over-10-round magazines that were exempted from California’s original ban.  This would also make a wide variety of popular shooting competitions impossible to hold in California, and would invariably make criminals of hundreds or thousands of innocent travelers inadvertently breaking California laws as they cross into the state with the newly illegal magazines.

Continue reading California Gun Owners Pack Your Bags? →

The Lie of the Lead Menace

The California legislature is on the verge of passing a bill banning the use of traditional ammunition – bullets containing lead – for hunting statewide.  The justification for the ban is that the giant, endangered carrion eater, the California Condor, is seriously threatened by lead poisoning from ingesting bullet fragments in game animals.  Proponents of the ban say that hunters leave carcasses or gut piles containing lead fragments in the field where the birds consume it causing them to become sick and die.  Even though research into the problem was extremely sketchy, in 2007, the California legislature bypassed the scientific review process of the state’s Fish and Game Commission, and instituted a ban on the use of common, lead-based bullets in areas where the condors live and feed.

The ban failed to get results.  Even though 99% of California hunters complied with the ban, lead levels in condors actually went up over the subsequent 5 years.  In response to this failure, rather than investigating and mitigating other possible sources for the lead poisoning, the groups that demanded the lead bullet ban in 2007 have again bypassed the Fish and Game Commission, again refused to produce credible scientific evidence and research, and again gone directly to the legislature to get the lead bullet ban expanded statewide.

That legislation passed the Assembly and is in a committee of the Senate.  It could soon be voted on by the full Senate.  Some reports say Governor Jerry Brown has indicated that he will sign the legislation if it comes to his desk.

There is no question that lead is a serious problem for condors.  But there is a question as to the source of the lead in the condors, and unfortunately, there has been very limited solid research into this critical question.  That the lead comes from the bullets of hunters has been presented as an obvious, unquestionable fact, but it has never been proven.  This blind assumption that hunters are to blame is not surprising from organizations and individuals who have been actively working to ban hunting for decades.  Groups like the Humane Society of the US, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife are radically opposed to all hunting.  Some have even spelled out their intention to eradicate hunting incrementally, species by species, and state by state, starting with California.  With these groups leading the charge against lead ammunition, is it any wonder that hunters are suspicious of the motives and data being presented to support the ban?

Continue reading Saving the California Condor →

Guns and the Left Bank

Forty years ago, my father, Neal Knox, was one of the first to shoot and write about an innovative new concept in precision rifle technology:  Fiberglass stocks.  Among the first manufacturers in the new field was Gale McMillan who founded McMillan Fiberglass Stocks.  It didn’t take long for fiberglass stocks to become the standard for serious precision rifle competitors and then gain acceptance in military and hunting applications.  From fiberglass stocks, the McMillans moved into making complete rifles, ammunition, and other firearm-related accessories and services.  Now Gale McMillan’s son Kelly, who has been involved in the family businesses from the beginning, has introduced a new firearm-related service from the McMillan family: credit card processing.

You might not think of credit card processing as a firearm-related business, but Kelly McMillan does because he has been the victim of anti-gun bias in the banking industry and he’s not the only one.  He knows that other firearm-related businesses are feeling the squeeze of the bankers’ bias every day.  Just like any other business, companies in the gun industry depend on financial services to make their businesses work.  The bias against guns among financial service companies has begun to cross the line from a nuisance to an actual impediment to doing business.

Continue reading Guns and Banking? →

The Bloomberg Conspiracy

And the Death of the NRA

About a month after the US Senate voted down a series of gun control amendments back in April, an article in the New Republic magazine boldly declared “This is How the NRA Ends: A Bigger, Richer, Meaner Gun Control Movement has Arrived.”  The article was a long diatribe regurgitating much of the stale tripe and distortion we’ve been hearing from the anti-rights movement for decades, and singing the praises of the movement’s new messiah, Mike Bloomberg, the three-term Mayor of New York City.  Alec MacGillis, the author of the article, and a senior editor at the magazine, is, like so many in the media, obviously a true believer in the concept of gun control.  His enthusiastic bias oozes from the page as he laments the shameful act of the Senate in rejecting such an eminently fair, reasonable, and common sense, bi-partisan compromise proposal to make it a federal felony to buy a gun from your neighbor without first submitting to government scrutiny and paying a punitive tax for wishing to exercise your constitutional rights – even if you already own a dozen guns and have a state-issued concealed carry license. 

His portrait of Bloomberg is one of a dynamic crusader motivated by compassion and imbued with the most powerful of superhero super-powers – money!  As one of the wealthiest men in the world, Mike Bloomberg can do just about anything he wants.  Bloomberg’s personal wealth is estimated to be something north of $27 billion and growing.   At the present rates, Bloomberg could give away or squander well over a billion dollars per year and still be rising in the Forbes 100 list of the world’s wealthiest people.  And Bloomberg does indeed give away and squander significant amounts of money each year.  Along with mandating various health rules in his city, such as broad restrictions on smoking, bans on restaurants serving trans-fats, and limits on the size of sweetened drinks restaurants can serve, Bloomberg has donated tens of millions of dollars to tobacco control organizations and programs around the world.  These efforts have earned him the title “Nanny Bloomberg” in some circles.

Continue reading Nanny Bloomberg →

Jones Confirmed as ATF Director

Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF, Mr. B. Todd Jones, has been confirmed by the US Senate to be the first, full-fledged Director of the agency since the post was realigned to require Senate confirmation in 2006.  Just days after the NRA expressed neutrality in the Jones confirmation process, Jones supporters were able to garner the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster and move on to the confirmation vote when Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) switched her vote.  Murkowski wasn’t the only Republican to cross over on the vote though; AZ Senator John McCain led the Republican delegation which included Lindsay Graham (SC), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Susan Collins (ME), and Mark Kirk (IL).  The rest of the Republicans in the Democrat-controlled Senate voted to maintain the filibuster that was blocking the Jones appointment.  After Murkowski changed her vote, Harry Reid held the voting open for a near-record 5 hours waiting for ND Democrat Heidi Heitkamp to arrive to cast the final vote for closing debate and moving on to the actual confirmation vote.  The final confirmation vote only required a simple majority and was an easy victory for the Democrats.  Echoing John Kerry’s statement that he voted against a measure before voting for it, most of the Republicans who had voted to close debate turned around and voted against final confirmation.

Jones was confirmed in spite of the fact that there are unresolved allegations of mismanagement and retaliation against whistleblowers in his capacity as US Attorney for Minnesota, and in spite of his apparent connections to the inception of Operation Fast and Furious, which put some 2000 AK and AR-style firearms into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.  Jones has been acting head of the agency since August of 2011 when he took over from former Acting Director Kenneth Melson.  Melson was tainted in the Fast and Furious scandal and was given a lateral transfer into a newly-created position where he has been quietly counting down to his full-benefits retirement.

Continue reading New ATF Director →

Stand Your Ground Must Stand

It didn’t take long after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin for the event to be portrayed as the act of a vigilante, or a one-man lynching party.  A mug shot of a surly, mentally detached-looking Zimmerman juxtaposed to a 9^th grade yearbook photo of bright-eyed, smiling, young Martin became staples of reports on the story, and, in a way, became the story itself.  The President of the United States weighed in with a comment that if he had a son, he “would look like Trayvon.”  And that was the story that was reported for the next year and a half – and which continues to be reported today, even after Zimmerman’s acquittal.

It is the story of a dissatisfied, Walter Mitty, police wannabe, pudgy, white guy (who parenthetically identifies himself as Hispanic), who saw an opportunity to take out his frustration and racist hatred on a helpless, hapless, young African-American child innocently walking home from the local convenience market one evening.

In this story, Zimmerman – whose mother is inconveniently Peruvian with a black grandmother, and who has a decidedly non-racist history (but luckily enough for the storytellers has a white-sounding name) and a Florida license to carry a concealed handgun (which proves he has self-esteem issues and probably a small penis).  As a self-appointed “neighborhood watch commander,” (never mind that he was elected by his neighbors), he is patrolling the streets in search of a victim when he spots young Trayvon Martin, an African-American youth in a hoodie, walking alone so he draws his gun and confronts the youth…

Continue reading George Zimmerman →

Celebrating Independence

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to 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 forever more.”

John Adams penned those words on July 3, 1776 in a letter to his wife Abigail.  On the previous day, after months of political wrangling, the Continental Congress had passed a resolution officially breaking ties with England and declaring the united colonies of America to be independent states.  On the following day, the Congress finalized the language of a formal letter announcing the decision and the reasons for it.  Adams expected that it would be the adoption of Richard Henry Lee’s resolution that would be remembered and celebrated, not Thomas Jefferson’s declaration.  But, as it was Jefferson’s letter that was used as the official announcement of Congress’ action, and as the letter had the date, July 4, 1776, prominently posted at the top, it was this date that the people connected with the act, and which they have celebrated for 237 years.

Continue reading Life, Liberty and Happiness →

The Most Dangerous Man in America

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely – so said Lord Acton.  We’ve also been told that money is power, and that money is the root of all sorts of evil.  When you add all of those bits of wisdom together, it paints a picture of the current Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomberg is one of the wealthiest men in the world.  He has used his billions to buy and hold his office as Mayor of NYC, where he has instituted policies and practices completely beyond the scope of lawful government and in direct opposition to the restrictions of the US Constitution.  Not only has Bloomberg decreed that his subjects may not purchase large soda drinks and that his Pretorian Guard may “stop and frisk” anyone they choose – at any time, for any reason or for no particular reason – he has also used the power of his office and apparently the city’s taxpayers money to advance his own dream of restrictive firearm laws across the nation.

Did wealth and power turn Bloomberg into a megalomaniac?  Or did megalomania drive him to wealth and power.  It’s impossible to say for certain, but either way, there can be no doubt that the wealth and power has fueled the arrogance and self-righteousness to levels rarely seen in American history.  Unfortunately, the man’s immense personal fortune, and willingness to apply it to his own idea of “nation-building” makes his god-complex particularly dangerous.

Continue reading Mayor Michael Bloomberg →

Ghosts of Waco

Could they end the reign of Obama?

Could the tragic events of Waco bring down the President and the Democrat machine after 20 years?  Mike McNulty, producer of the Emmy Award winning, Academy Award nominated documentary Waco: Rules of Engagement, and its follow-up films, Waco, A New Revelation, and The FLIR Project, believes it could.  McNulty says that the close ties between the Waco atrocity and members of the Obama administration – including Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, and powerful congressional Democrats, could unravel the administration and the entire Washington power structure.

McNulty insists that Hillary Clinton in particular was deeply involved in the Waco debacle and in the multiple cover-ups that followed, and that criminal prosecutions could be brought against her and others, “There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” says McNulty.

 That’s a pretty dramatic allegation, but McNulty says that’s where the evidence leads, and no one knows the evidence of the Waco tragedy better than McNulty.  He and his experts were given unprecedented access to the Waco files and evidence locker during the making of the documentaries, and they carefully catalogued what they found – including items that were incorrectly identified in the official records.

Continue reading Ghosts of Waco →