Citizen Gun Owners – First Responders in Kenya

When two teams of cowardly, Muslim extremist terrorists stormed the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya last month, police and government forces were slow to respond, but local gun owners were not.  Kenya has very strict gun laws, banning most semi-auto rifles, and tightly restricting possession of handguns but, like New York City, those with the right connections, enough money, and who are persistent enough, can own, and even carry, personal defense handguns.  One such concealed carry license holder was standing in line at a bank in the mall when the shooting started.  A New York Times story from September 26 reported that the man, identified as Raju, immediately sent out an urgent text message to friends in his shooting club.  The story then says that shooting club members, neighborhood watch volunteers (like George Zimmerman?), and “plainclothes police officers” rushed to the mall and gave the terrorists something to worry about while they helped people trying to get out of the besieged buildings. 

While the Times story focused primarily on the delayed response of the police and military, the fact that it even mentioned armed civilians as first responders is pretty shocking to those of us in the rights movement who have suffered the slings and arrows of the Times’ anti-gun bias for decades.  For them to even mention Raju and his friends from the gun club is pretty significant, though we assume it was an aberration and don’t expect any shift in the Times’ position on guns and the right to arms.  Apparently the Times thinks private gun owners in Kenya are somehow more responsible than private gun owners in the US though.

It should be noted that the Westgate mall in Nairobi is not a posted “No Guns” zone.  Few people in the country have the legal right to carry personal defense firearms, the whole country is considered a “gun free zone” with exceptions made for those authorized by the government.  Here in the US, where millions of people exercise their right to carry personal defense firearms, criminals and lunatics bent on killing as many people as possible almost always choose a location that forbids legal, civilian firearms.  The deranged punk who attacked the audience of the Batman movie in Colorado, for instance, passed by two other, larger theaters, to get to the theater where he carried out his attack.  The difference was that the other theaters were not posted.  Why would he do that unless he was hoping to reduce the chances of running into armed resistance inside the theater?  An exception to that rule was the attack at the Gabby Giffords meet and greet, which occurred in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson.  In that atrocity, one of the civilian first responders who helped to subdue the attacker was carrying a gun, but he arrived a few seconds too late to need to use it.  Had one of the victims not interfered with the mad man’s reload, that armed citizen – who, like the gun owners in Kenya had rushed to the sound of the gunfire – would have been the only thing standing between the people in that parking lot and at least another 15 rounds of 9mm.

Continue reading Westgate Shopping Mall-Nairobi →

Starbucks and Guns

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz posted a public letter asking gun owners not to bring their guns into Starbucks stores, some in the media and anti-rights crowd declared it a victory, while some in the gun-rights crowd called it a declaration of war.  It was neither. 

As a company, Seattle-based Starbucks tends to lean left, supporting “progressive” causes and candidates, but when the professional hoplophobe lobby got upset about seeing some Starbucks customers legally, open carrying firearms, Starbucks offered a reasonable response.  They refused to give in to demands that they ban the practice.  The anti-rights lobby was furious and several different groups decided that Starbucks must be punished, so they called for boycotts.  In response, pro-rights advocates called on gun owners to show their appreciation for Starbucks’ reasonable position by making it a point to do business with the company, especially during the antis’ boycott periods.  The result was that on the designated boycott days, Starbucks locations around the country did more business than normal.

Unfortunately, some of the rights activists took things too far.  Someone (the first we recall seeing was on an anti-gun site) reworked Starbucks’ iconic mermaid logo, placing guns in the mermaid’s hands and adding a message about “Guns and Coffee” in the circle around the picture.  This image became popular among some pro-rights advocates and the parody logo found its way onto T-shirts, baseball caps, and coffee mugs.  It was sort of cute and clever, but those sporting the bastardized logo were being rather insensitive at best to the folks at Starbucks.  After all, the company has spent years and millions of dollars to build their brand, and businesses rarely consider it a friendly act to modify or repurpose a logo without specific permission to do so.

Continue reading Starbucks Anyone? →

The Most Important Election This Year

Will Cuccinelli succumb to the siren song of moderation?

Polls say that popular Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is trailing former Democrat National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe in his bid for Governor of Virginia.  If the polls are correct – or even close to being correct – the blame must rest upon the professional political strategists in the Cuccinelli camp.  The only poll that really matters happens on Election Day, of course, but the significant gap in opinion polling between Cuccinelli and McAuliffe at this point cannot be completely discounted.  McAuliffe has run a smart campaign so far, and Cuccinelli has not.  What’s the key difference?  McAuliffe has been reaching out aggressively to his base, while simultaneously offering reassurance to “moderates” in the state.  Cuccinelli, on the other hand, has generally ignored a large swath of his base and focused on outreach to the “moderate middle” that the experts say swing elections.  Their focus on the squishy center is a strategic error that may cost Cuccinelli the election.

In the coming off-off-year elections, Virginia is the single most important race in the country.  It is a cage match between a far-left, big government, political insider with close ties to Barack Obama and the Clintons, and a hardline conservative who filed a lawsuit against Obamacare.  The race is particularly important to me and the rights community because Cuccinelli has always been a strong supporter of the Second Amendment as a fundamental, individual right, while McAuliffe has raised millions of dollars for the most rabidly anti-gun politicians in the country and has vowed to bring the Bloomberg anti-rights agenda to Virginia.  After a private meeting with Mayor Bloomberg in New York, McAuliffe posted a list of anti-rights proposals on his web site.  The list includes reinstatement of the failed, “one-gun-a-month” scheme that Virginians recently repealed, criminalizing private firearm transfers, and banning standard magazines.  You can be sure there will be a significant quid pro quo from Bloomberg and his various subsidiary groups.  Do Virginians really want their governor to be in the pocket of Mike Bloomberg?

Continue reading Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli →

They’re almost everywhere, hiding in plain sight, and they’re dangerous.  What are they?  They’re local mayors who have pledged fealty to Mike Bloomberg and his organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns or MAIG.

Opposing illegal guns, what’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong is that the organization is not what it advertises itself to be.   Not only does MAIG advocate for more restrictive gun control laws than their recruiting information claims, they do it in often shady ways – utilizing taxpayer dollars to fund lobbying efforts to restrict the rights of those same taxpayers.  In addition a disproportionate number of MAIG-aligned mayors have been indicted and convicted for various crimes in recent years.  It’s hard to say why the sleaze runs so thick – charges have ranged from bribery and corruption to embezzlement, assault, and even child abuse – but the correlation is undeniable.  Maybe it’s because MAIG’s duplicitous methods attract the duplicitous. 

MAIG was founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg supposedly to advocate for laws to stop the “flow of illegal guns” into our communities.  Like so many sound bites, that statement sounds good on the surface, but looking just a little deeper reveals flaws.  The first problem with the idea is that the organization implies that they only seek tighter controls on guns that are already “illegal.” In fact, MAIG wants to expand the range of guns considered “illegal” by banning more guns and adding more people to the list of prohibited persons.  Illegalizing illegal guns goes to another level.  And how exactly does making guns “illegaler” help anyone? 

What MAIG actually is at its core is a gun ban organization.  It is an organization developed by big city mayors from cities that already have restrictive gun laws, but who want to export those restrictive gun laws to other cities, towns, and the nation.  The laws have failed to reduce crime in their cities so the mayors like Mike Bloomberg and Boston mayor Tom Menino want to export those failed laws around the country under the tried and true hoplophobic formula that when a gun control law fails, the reasonable response is to institute more gun control laws.  And it appears that there isn’t any gun control law that MAIG doesn’t support – from bans on semi-auto rifles and limits on magazine capacity to bans on self-defense carry – and self-defense itself.  MAIG Director Mark Glaze suggested that it would be cowardly, unmanly, and unjustifiable for a person to ever shoot someone who attacked them with only their hands and feet.  Glaze must be a really tough guy, and he must not have a wife, mother, or daughter.

Continue reading Deconstructing MAIG →

Let’s Kick Bloomberg While He’s Down

Colorado Victory: Proof and Opportunity

           Colorado Senate President John Morse and State Senator Angela Giron are both out of a job as of September 10 when vote-counts showed that recall elections against the pair were successful.  Morse lost in a close race, while Giron was effectively trounced.  The recall effort was initiated by angry GunVoters after the legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a gun control bill which requires almost all private firearm transfers to go through a licensed dealer for background checks, requires gun buyers to pay a fee to the dealer for processing the paperwork, and limits new magazines to no more than 15-rounds.

We were told by Mike Bloomberg and his crew at Mayors Against Illegal Guns that this election was going to prove once and for all that the “gun lobby’s” power is a myth, that politicians who fear the wrath of GunVoters have been conned, and that if politicians will step out in support of gun control, the voters will reward them.  Bloomberg wrote a personal check for $350,000 to back up that statement and helped recruit other deep-pockets donors like California gazillionaire, Eli Broad, who kicked in another $200,000, and major DC fundraising fronts that chipped in several hundred thousand more.  All told, these individuals and groups contributed the lion’s share of some $3,000,000 the campaigns spent trying to save Morse and Giron – at least 5 times more than the approximately half-million dollars spent by those trying to fire the pair.

Now that the election is over, we hear that the results are relatively meaningless – “just symbolic” – that the only thing proven is that, this time, Republicans succeeded in suppressing the vote, even though more Democrats cast ballots than Republicans did, that Morse and Giron ran poor campaigns, and that the real reason the recalls succeeded was that Colorado voters just don’t like Mike Bloomberg and his money.  His $350,000 check is being portrayed as a ham-handed attempt to buy the election, and this isn’t the first time such complaints have been made.

Continue reading Colorado Recall →

Death by a Thousand Cuts 

The Obama administration’s attempts to whittle away our rights.

By Chris Knox and Jeff Knox

(September 5, 2013) Taking advantage of the media attention around the swearing-in of B. Todd Jones as the new Director of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Obama administration announced two Executive Actions aimed at appeasing gun control groups and asserting executive authority.  Ostensibly intended to “curb gun violence,” the measures are even more unlikely to have an impact on crime, suicide, or accidents than most of the proposals we see from the anti-rights crowd.  The first proposal deals with the re-importation of US-made, World War II era firearms – guns that have never been common in crime and are prized collectors’ items today.  The second proposal deals with the application process for owning items regulated under the National Firearms Act or NFA.  The NFA is the body of federal laws dealing with regulation of things like machine guns and silencers.

People can own NFA items, but there is a rigorous application process – including photos and fingerprints, extensive background check, a $200 tax, and requirement for permission from their local “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” or CLEO.  Unfortunately, in some jurisdictions the CLEO’s refuse to sign NFA paperwork, effectively banning these items in their areas.  There is also a problem when an NFA owner wants to let friends and family members shoot his guns or even man his booth at a gun show, because the law requires that the items always be under the direct control of the registered owner.  This creates a particular problem when a registered owner dies unexpectedly; his family can be left as unintentional felons for possessing his NFA items.  

A solution to these problems was found in the rules regarding corporate ownership of NFA items.  The law provides for legal entities like corporations to own NFA items and authorize employees and members of the entity to possess them.  Corporate ownership does not have the same level of stringent background checks, allows multiple, legal “possessors,” and does not require CLEO approval.  This has led to a cottage industry for lawyers setting up family NFA trusts, LLC’s, and small corporations for people wanting to own NFA items in a more flexible manner.  Of course, anyone prohibited from possessing a firearm is still prohibited from possessing corporate or trust owned NFA items.

Continue reading Death by a Thousand Cuts →

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? →