I Trust You – with a Car or a Gun

By Jeff Knox

(December 31, 2015) Over the Christmas weekend my wife and I spent some time on the road traveling to visit family and friends.  As usual, I was driving about 5 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65, and I assume the cars coming from the other direction were doing about the same, which reminded me of an analogy I have often used when talking about trust, responsible behavior, and the different perceptions people have about given situations.

Two cars driving opposite directions on a two-lane road at 70 miles per hour are effectively approaching each other at 140 miles per hour.  At speeds like that, bumpers, crush zones, airbags, and seat belts are not likely to be of much use.  The only thing between you and that 17-year old in the ’95 Chevy Silverado coming at you at 140 miles per hour is a 3-inch wide stripe of yellow paint, yet most of us face this situation almost every day without much thought. So as Janet and I wound our way from Wickenberg toward Yarnell and Peeples Valley, I wondered how many of the occupants of the cars swooshing past us would have been uncomfortable standing in line behind me in the supermarket when they noticed the .45 on my hip.  Most real Arizonans would hardly take notice, but we have a lot of refugees from places like California and New York who are easily shocked by such a sight.  Nothing in my appearance or demeanor presents a threat to them, but they don’t trust me and are concerned simply because I have a gun.  They have an irrational fear of guns – hoplophobia.

Continue reading A Matter of Mistrust →

Americans Catching On To Gun Control Farce

By Jeff Knox

(December 23, 2015) Two separate polls, both sponsored by Big Media agencies that are not historically friendly to guns and gun owners, were recently released, and the results are encouraging.  Polls commissioned by ABC News and the Washington Post, and by CBS News and the New York Times, both found that a majority of Americans oppose the idea of banning so-called “assault weapons.”

Perhaps people are realizing that terrorists and homicidal lunatics are always going to find a way to execute their evil.  Maybe they’re recalling the terrorists who used box cutters to turn planes into weapons on 9/11, the Muslim separatists in China who killed 29 people and injured 130 more last year using nothing more than kitchen knives, or the terrorist who acquired guns and explosives in heavily gun-restricted California, and even more restrictive France, which they used to launch attacks in San Bernardino and Paris.  Maybe people are realizing that abrogating the rights of millions of people in the unlikely hope that it might prevent a handful of evil-doers from committing atrocities, is not only irrational, but also unreasonable.  Or perhaps people are finally looking at the real numbers and seeing that crime has been going down dramatically while the proliferation of firearms, particularly AR-type rifles, has been sky-rocketing, and that rifles of any kind, while they have been used in several highly publicized tragedies, are actually comparatively rare in crimes of any kind, accounting for only about 3% of murders each year.

One thing that is starkly clear from these polls: Gun control has become a major dividing issue between Democrats and Republicans.  Both polls show majority support among Democrats for stricter gun control laws and an “assault weapons” ban, and both show majority opposition to those ideas among Republicans.  Democrats support an AW ban 61% to 36% opposed.  Republicans are even more definitive, with 70% opposing and only 27% supporting a ban.  Independents split 55% opposed, to 43% in favor.  On the broader question of making gun laws stricter, 76% of Democrats support the idea, while the same 76% of Republicans think gun laws should remain as they are or be made less strict.

Continue reading Dividing Lines →

You Might Be A Terrorist!

By Jeff Knox

(December 15, 2015) Are you a terrorist?  A potential terrorist?  A suspected terrorist? A suspected potential terrorist?  Or potentially a suspected terrorist?

As Jeff Foxworthy might say; If you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the rule of law… You might be a terrorist.

Prohibiting people listed on the government’s secret Terrorist Watchlist and its secret subsidiary the Federal No-Fly List from buying guns is again on the table.  President Obama expressed the argument simply the other night when he said; “If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun.”  That seems reasonable, but of course, like most government programs, seeming reasonable and being reasonable are two vastly different things. 

More importantly, that is not what the legislation now pending in Congress does.

Politicians, the media, and anti-rights organizations are fond of terms like “terror gap” and “terrorist loophole,” then they float between talking about the “No-Fly List” and the “Terrorist Watchlist.”  In fact, their legislation does not use either of those lists, but instead gives the Attorney General (or her designate) the authority to create yet another list, based on the same vague criteria of the Terrorist Watchlist, but with her discretion as to who to include and who to leave off.

Continue reading Some Say YOU Are a Terrorist →

Will Terrorism Destroy the Conservative Movement?

By Jeff Knox

(December 10, 2015) The string of high profile shootings and terrorist attacks around the country over the past several months has put people on edge, and understandably so.  The Obama Administration provides no comfort with their refusal to call terrorism what it is or admit that it is in any way connected to the Islamic religion.  When Obama’s concern for tainting the “religion of peace” with the blood of terrorism is compared to his zeal in broadly chastising police for indifference to black lives, or his willingness to conflate the acts of one drug and alcohol addled young man to everyone who has ever whistled “Dixie,” it naturally raises questions about just how worried he really is about “cultural sensitivity.” 

Instead of acknowledging the real and obvious threats posed by religious radicals of the Muslim persuasion, Mr. Obama would rather focus on the “easy availability of firearms,” as though terrorists who are willing to die to kill innocents would be impeded by paperwork.  His latest ploy is to stretch the definition of the Gun Control Act’s “prohibited person” to include those on the government’s secret Terrorist Watchlist, and so prohibit them from being able to buy guns from a licensed dealer.  Who is on the list?  That’s a secret.  How does someone get on the list?  That’s secret too.  Could anyone be on the list by mistake?  Ask Ted Kennedy.  Would it keep guns away from terrorists?  Of course not.  They don’t sell AK’s in Paris do they?  Fuzzy feelings trump real effects in Obama’s world.

But the terrorism threat needs some perspective.  Even though we seem to have seen more lunatics and terrorists randomly attacking innocent people in public places over the past few years, the odds of you or me actually being involved in one of those attacks are still incredibly low.  Estimates place the odds of being killed in a terrorist attack at about one in 20 million.  Compare that to the odds of being struck by lightning at about 1 in 5 million.  Add in all of the “mass shootings” in recent years, and you’re still about 3 times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a mass shooter or bomber.

Then why are we so worried?

Continue reading A Serious Terrorist Threat →

Last Chance to Buy a Gun?

By Jeff Knox

(December 3, 2015) Barack Obama continues his seven-year run as the nation’s top firearm salesman, raising the question in many Americans’ minds whether they might be facing their last chance to purchase the guns they want.  Mass shootings and terrorism, along with the Democratic Party’s open embrace of gun control as a campaign issue are assisting Obama’s unintended effort to push gun sales to new records. 

The FBI released an interim report on the NICS checks for Black Friday and the after-Thanksgiving sales weekend.  The numbers are pretty impressive.  NICS is the FBI’s National Instant Check System that licensed gun dealers go through to verify that their customers are not prohibited from purchasing a firearm.  According to the FBI report, the numbers for Friday, November 27 broke all records.  Not only were more background checks processed that day than any previous Black Friday, the numbers topped any 24-hour period in the history of the system.  The day’s total reached 185,345 checks, shattering the previous single-day record of 177,170 set December 21, 2012.  That previous record, of course, followed the Sandy Hook horror, and was marked by Obama getting out front on the gun issue, which he had previously kept “under the radar.”

But NICS checks are only an indicator of the total number of guns transferred on any given day, since not all firearm sales go through NICS.  Several states conduct their own background checks which may or may not be included in NICS statistics.  Many state-issued concealed carry licenses or purchase permits serve as a “pre-check” and allow the firearm purchaser to bypass the NICS system, and then there is the notorious “private sale loophole” which allows individuals who are not in the business of buying and selling firearms to sell or otherwise dispose of their personal property without having to go through any sort of federal red tape. 

Continue reading Last Chance to Buy a Gun? →

Chinks in The Armor of Light

By Chris Knox

More than thirty years ago my late father Neal Knox contemplated potential faults in the “Guns and Babies Coalition” that played such an important role in electing President Reagan.  He worried that the coalition, although solid with strong cultural and ideological ties binding pro-gun and pro-life views together, could fray along certain ideological lines.  Pro-gun Libertarians tend to lean pro-choice, while pro-life could be stretched and redefined to be anti-gun.  Highlighting these ideological conflicts seems to be the whole point of the new documentary, Armor of Light.

Rev. Rob Schenck, who has spent decades in the pro-life movement working with the likes of Operation Rescue and his own Faith and Action organization, is featured in the film to illustrate exactly the mindset Dad had considered back in the Reagan days.  Rev. Schenck’s break with the Guns side of the Guns and Babies Coalition drives the documentary film, which was directed by Abigail Disney.  Ms. Disney is the granddaughter of Walt’s brother and business partner Roy Disney.  She uses her share of the family fortune to promote causes that interest her, one of which now appears to be gun control. 

Continue reading Chinks in The Armor of Light →

We Don’t Want to Be Paris!

By Jeff Knox

(November 19, 2015) By now, we’ve all heard about the atrocities in Paris; Islamist terrorists driving through the streets randomly shooting people, Islamist terrorists wrapping themselves in explosives and nuts and bolts, and blowing themselves and innocents apart, Islamist terrorists strolling into a crowded music venue and opening fire with automatic weapons, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.  It’s an outrage.  It’s a travesty.  It’s a perversion of religion.  And it’s coming to America.  Soon.

We’ve already seen some of this, but we don’t have high concentrations of “radicalized” Muslims here like they do in France and most of Europe.  We also don’t have their strict gun control laws.

That last point is worth further consideration.  Did strict gun control laws in France serve to mitigate the terrorists’ actions?  Or did they empower the terrorists?  If terrorists there could easily purchase semi-auto firearms – or have their wives or girlfriends buy them – as they can here in the U.S., would that have resulted in more attacks by more terrorists with a greater loss of life?  When (not if) it happens here, I’m certain we’ll hear that assertion from the usual quarters.

Acts of terrorism are rarely spur-of-the-moment things.  Even acts by madmen or “lone wolf” terrorists have been planned out well in advance, with weapons acquisition, target selection, and timing all thought through.

Continue reading Not in Paris, Texas →

Senseless in Seattle

By Jeff Knox

(November 12, 2015) The city of Seattle, Washington passed an ordinance this summer that imposes a $25 tax on every gun sold in the city, and 5 cents on each round of ammunition except .22 caliber and smaller, which will carry a tax of 2 cents per round.  Not only is the law senseless, it’s a huge waste of taxpayers’ money, and it’s patently illegal.  The Second Amendment Foundation, based just outside of Seattle, has already filed suit, along with the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the National Rifle Association, two Seattle gun stores, and a pair of local residents to block the city’s action.  This is not the first time SAF has taken Seattle to court.  Just a few years ago SAF had to sue to block an ordinance banning legal guns in city parks.  They won that suit, and it is very likely that they and their co-plaintiffs will win this new one as well, because the state has a long-standing preemption law that is very clear and unequivocal.  It says that regulation of firearms is the exclusive purview of the State Legislature, and any law, ordinance, or regulation that is firearm-related must go through that body.

Seattle’s latest attempted work-around is to claim that they are no regulating firearms or ammunition, merely taxing them under their normal taxing authority.  Courts all over the country have repeatedly rejected this sort of pedantic claim, noting that the operative result of the law, and indeed its openly stated intent, is to limit and impact the purchase and ownership of firearms and ammunition.  Even if these taxes were strictly intended as revenue generators, they would still be in violation of the preemption law.  But since the tax is billed as a “public safety” measure, there is no basis whatsoever for the claim that it is not intended to infringe on the legislature’s exclusive firearm territory.

Continue reading Senseless in Seattle →

Guns Win

By Jeff Knox

(November 5, 2015) As this column reported a few weeks ago, the Democrats are betting big on gun control for this election cycle.  That’s good news for GunVoters, that minority of us who, while perhaps not being one-issue voters, don’t trust a politician who doesn’t trust us with a gun.  Republicans, however, seem oblivious to the opportunity.

For the past 20 years, Democrats have tiptoed around the gun issue, with only an occasional surge in rhetoric after some highly-publicized atrocity, but only after hedging their bets and voting cautiously lest they upset the GunVoters back home.  For most of those 20 years, there has been a steady drumbeat from the professional gun control lobby and their media friends, denouncing the Democrats’ avoidance of the issue as unfounded paranoia based on false assumptions.  A 2009 editorial from the New York Times, which relied heavily on expert opinions from the gun control lobbyists at the Brady Campaign, is a great example.  It called the fear of offending GunVoters a “deadly myth,” and dismissed GunVoters’ role in the Republican Revolution of 1994 and the defeat of Al Gore in 2000.  They pointed to the election of Barack Obama, and pro-gun losses in various House and Senate races as proof that the NRA is overrated.

They’re certainly right that the NRA is overrated, but the reality isn’t as simple as they paint it.  NRA is overrated because people who don’t understand the issue, including the Times editorial board, and a majority of politicians on both sides of the aisle, think NRA is “the Gun Lobby.”  That’s simply not true.  The gun lobby is much bigger than just the NRA, and it’s much more complex than just one organization, its positions, and its leaders.  While the NRA is the big dog of the gun rights movement, it is a mistake to think that they are the end all and be all of that movement.  Likewise, it is a myth to think that an NRA endorsement or NRA opposition is all that matters to GunVoters.

Continue reading Guns Win →

Silencers Finally Making Noise

By Jeff Knox

(October 29, 2015) For over a decade The Firearms Coalition has been calling for removal of the ridiculous federal restrictions on firearms mufflers, commonly referred to as suppressors or silencers.  Back in 2006 and 2007 we were actively working with the office of Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) on legislation to remove silencers from the restrictions of the National Firearms Act, but those efforts were sidelined by Senator Craig’s personal problems.  Since then, an entire organization dedicated to this objective, the American Suppressor Association, has come into being, and now Representative Matt Salmon (R-AZ) has announced the introduction of new legislation, H.R.3799, to remove silencers from the NFA and treat them like firearms.

While we’d rather see silencers completely deregulated, moving them from the NFA to the Gun Control Act, or GCA, would be a significant improvement.  The idea that you can get a ticket for not having an effective muffler on your car or motorcycle, but can be sentenced to 10 years in prison and subject to a $10,000 fine for having any sort of noise reducer for a firearm, is beyond ridiculous.  But that has been the standard since passage of the 1934 National Firearms Act.  Under the NFA, any device that muffles or reduces the sound made by a gun is highly regulated, taxed, and controlled.  Silencers, as they are broadly referred to under the law, are generally nothing more than a metal tube with some baffles or washers in it to slow and redirect hot gasses, but they are considered firearms under the NFA, and subject to the same taxes and restrictions as fully automatic weapons.  

It doesn’t matter whether the muffler is attached to a firearm or not, or even if you have no firearm to attach it to.  Worse yet, the restrictions on silencers are even more expansive than those on machine guns.  While only the actual receiver, and a few very specific parts, of a machine gun are subject to restrictions, every part or piece of a silencer is illegal to possess unless it is properly registered, taxed, and accompanied by the proper paperwork.  The broad application has led to some bizarre rulings by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which has gone so far as to state that possession of steel wool scouring pads is a violation of the Act since the steel wool could be used as  baffling in a silencer.  They have also declared that plastic noise dissipaters integrated into air rifles and BB guns – which would be destroyed by hot gasses from an actual firearm – are silencers under the law and require registration and payment of the $200 tax.  Recently, the ATF decreed that certain muzzle brakes, which help reduce recoil and muzzle jump when firing, must be registered as silencers, even though these devices actually increase the gun’s noise levels around the shooter.  ATF says the construction of the devices is too similar to the internal construction of a silencer.

Continue reading Silencers Finally Making Noise →