The Exploitation of Mother Emanuel

By Jeff Knox

(June 24, 3015) Last week a deranged coward joined a Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina, sat with them for about an hour, and then pulled out a gun and started shooting people, killing nine.  He then drove away, only to be captured without incident a few hours later.

Reports say the demented little troll declared his need to kill the people because they were “raping our women and taking over our country.”  How sick and detached from reality did this vile creature have to be to take these nine innocent lives – six women and three men –on such a pretext?

The answer to that was summed up very accurately by Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychologist who appeared on FOX and Friends a few days ago.  During his brief interview, Dr. Welner stressed several things. “The mass killer is an irrelevant person […] who is looking for relevance,” he said.  “Of course this is a hate crime.  Of course it’s a racist crime, but the mass killer is about himself, and is about getting attention for himself, and he knows that if we have this ‘national dialog,’ ultimately we’re talking about him.”  He goes on to say; “This was a cultural crime.  It is happening in the United States much more than elsewhere, but it’s not a gun issue, it’s because we socially incentivize it.”  Dr. Welner suggests that these murderers are seeking fame and attention, and that the media and politicians reward them by giving them that fame and attention.  He said that rather than focusing on the infamy-seeking perpetrator, we should instead focus attention on the victims and what remarkable people they were.  He offered up coverage of the murder of Chris Kyle as an example of a better way to handle these situations.  In the Kyle case, the attention focused primarily on Kyle and his life and accomplishments.  Dr. Welner pointed out that few people remember the name of the man who murdered Kyle because the media and politicians didn’t focus their attention and agenda on the murderer, instead focusing on the victims.

Continue reading Crying for Mother Emanuel →

Control freaks just can’t help themselves

By Jeff Knox

(June 16, 2015) Both the Obama administration and Congress have been busy with firearm-related business in recent weeks, with the Department of Justice offering up a series of regulatory changes relating to firearms, and members of the U.S. House introducing legislation and appropriations riders aimed at rolling back some of the current restrictions and complications.

The issue that has caught the most attention within the firearms community is a proposal from the Department of State to “clarify” regulations regarding the “export” of “military technology.”  The proposal was obviously spurred by the 3D printing activists at Defense Distributed, who have sued the federal government for suppression of their First Amendment rights.

Defense Distributed is a company founded by libertarian-minded college student, Cody Wilson, who wanted to prove the futility of gun control laws by demonstrating the simplicity of firearm manufacture using 3D printer technology.  While firearms have previously been made using traditional machining processes, taking a chunk of metal and carving away everything that didn’t look like a gun, 3D printing reverses that process, spraying layer after layer of material (usually plastic) to build a three-dimensional shape. 

Continue reading Control Freaks →

New Legislation Mandates Flying Cars

Within five years, all new cars must fly.  Used cars must fly within ten.

By Jeff Knox

(June 4, 2015) Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation requiring that five years after its passage, all handguns manufactured or imported into the U.S. must have “personalization” technology incorporated into them that prevents “unauthorized” users from firing them.

Okay, that’s not flying cars, but it might as well be.  The comparison is very appropriate.  Currently, there are prototypes and a few awkward, commercial examples of flying cars out there.  None is practical or reliable, and few people would be willing to trust their lives to them.  Nonetheless, they are out there.

Similarly, there are a few prototypes and commercial examples of “personalized” firearms – guns equipped with technology which prevents their use by “unauthorized” persons – but like flying cars, so-called “smart gun” technology is impractical and unreliable, relegating it to the realm of science fiction and movie fantasy.

Continue reading Flying Cars? →

Bloomberg Steamrolls Oregon

By Jeff Knox

(May 15, 2015) After dumping millions of dollars into political campaigns and misleading advertisements, Mike Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety managed to eke out a victory in Oregon last week.  By the thinnest of party-line majorities, the Oregon State House passed a bill criminalizing firearm transfers between private citizens, requiring that any transfer must go through federally licensed firearm dealers, requiring paperwork, submission to a background check, and incurring additional costs for the buyer.

The law is so stringently worded that even leaving a gun with your wife’s best friend when she’s house-sitting for you, or holding onto your buddy’s guns when he’s on deployment with the military would make you – and them – criminals, if you didn’t first take all of the guns down to a dealer, fill out paperwork on all of them, and have the transferee pass a background check.  That paperwork, with identifying information for all of the guns, and both individuals involved, would then be available to law enforcement and bureaucrats, and could be used to track down the owners of any guns that might be banned at some point in the future.

Last year Bloomberg and his friends spent well over $10 million to get a similar bill passed in Washington State through a voter initiative, and they spent several hundred thousand more getting an almost identical initiative qualified for the 2016 ballot in Nevada.  Residents of that state can expect to see a multi-million dollar Bloomberg campaign telling them that the measure is “merely” a background check bill intended to “keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”  They will claim, as they did in Washington and Oregon, that the law will save lives, and they will make it sound like a simple and effective way to keep guns away from dangerous criminals.  All of that will be lies and distortion.

Continue reading Bradies, Bloomies, and Bongs →