Guitars, Guns, and Federal Excesses

On August 24, 2011, federal agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service raided offices and production facilities of the Gibson Guitar company.  They sent workers home and confiscated several pallets of wood along with computer files and numerous guitars (amounting to about $2 million in lost production and property).  This was the second raid on Gibson in as many years over questions about some of the wood the legendary guitar makers use in their products.  The timing of the latest raid is convenient for the government as they are currently trying to convince a federal judge to indefinitely delay a lawsuit from Gibson demanding the return of some half-million dollars worth of ebony wood seized by federal agents back in 2009.  No charges have ever been filed against the company regarding that raid, but the government has continued to refuse to return the seized wood which they suspected might have been illegally harvested in Madagascar.

The object of the August 24 raid appears to have been wood imported from India.  Gibson says that they have been extra careful to document all of the wood they import since the 2009 federal assault and that the particular wood in question was acquired from a supplier certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an environmental organization set up to protect endangered trees by identifying legally harvested wood and closing markets to illegally cut products.  The particular wood in question was purchased and imported from India with an extensive paper-trail from the Indian government and the US Customs Service.  According to Gibson, the Fish and Wildlife Service is claiming that the wood violates an Indian requirement that wood exported from the country must be processed to a certain degree by Indian craftsmen prior to export.  Gibson says this requirement was either met or waived by the Indian government as demonstrated by India’s export authorizations.  The Indian government did not sanction or participate in the August raid.  Gibson executives say they are being unjustly bullied by the feds.

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No More Bonzer Blokes

Rugged Individualism Replaced by Australia’s Nanny State

I’ve long been fascinated by Australia and its people.  A visit to that country has been high on my bucket list since I was just a kid, but more and more as I read about present-day Australia I am disappointed and saddened.  It seems that the days of rugged individualism and self-determination are gone from the land down under and the heroic characters of the past like Ned Kelly and Banjo Patterson have faded into the realm of myth and fairytales.  It wasn’t so long ago that the reputation of Australia included the belief that one Australian could easily – and happily – pommel any two men from any other country – more if she put down her baby.  And Australian men had an even hardier reputation.

Sadly that’s no longer the case as Australia has apparently devolved into a namby-pamby society of effete urbanites, hen-pecked by anglophilic nannies and socialist, world-citizen politicians who revel in Australia’s rugged history while criminalizing and quashing any hint of such thought or action in present day. 

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Left-Leaning Intelligentsia Discovers the “The Secret History of Guns”

With its publication of “The Secret History of Guns,” The Atlantic, that venerable highbrow monthly, it appears that the northeastern establishment has uncovered the dark “secret” of gun control – that gun control laws exist not to control guns, but people – in particular, Black people. Congratulations to the wine and brie crowd for making that discovery. It’s a point my father, gun writer and pro-rights lobbyist Neal Knox, was making forty years ago. Friend Clayton Cramer, published his excellent “Racist Roots of Gun Control” in 1993, and the article was picked up in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy in 1995. Nonetheless, since it’s now in The Atlantic, it’s accepted thought inside the establishment.

Adapted from a recently-released book, Gunfight by UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler, “The Secret History of Guns” opens with the 1967 armed march by Black Panthers on the California state capitol building. Professor Winkler quite accurately says that incident “launched the modern gun-rights movement.” Winkler then moves through a compact history of gun rights in America starting with the Second Amendment, which he calls “maddeningly ambiguous,” citing a conflict between the meaning of “well-regulated,” and “the right of the People.” Just an aside, a student of language might find less ambiguity by applying a simple analysis to the text, identifying the subject, verb, object and modifiers. Nonetheless, we’ll let it pass; the statement can be viewed as either a sop to the anti-rights side of the issue, or an effort by Winkler to establish his neutrality. The rest of the article delves into the history of gun control from the angle of race and aligns quite closely to arguments we in the pro-rights side have been making for years.

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Questioning “No Questions Asked” Are Gun-Surrender Gimmicks Legal

For decades we’ve heard about gun turn-ins – “Gun Buy-Back” programs sponsored by churches, civic groups, and various other misinformed do-gooder organizations.

The very name – buy-back – implies that guns belong not to individuals, but to the government, or at least to the people who don’t like guns.

The programs have the stated purpose of “getting guns off the street,” which seems to give operators a pass from further scrutiny, even as they offer a tangible good such as a grocery store coupon or gift card in return for a gun, “no questions asked,” much like any other fencing operation.

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Repeal False Gun Free School Zone Act

Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has introduced a bill (HR-2613) to repeal the federal Gun Free School Zone Act. While many in the general public and the gun prohibition community will balk and ask questions like, “What does anyone need with a gun at a school,” knowledgeable rights supporters are wondering why it has taken so long.

The Gun Free School Zone Act, or GFSZA for short, was originally passed by Congress back in 1990, but in 1995 the Supreme Court voided the law, ruling it (quite correctly) to be an unconstitutional overreach of federal power. Congress quickly passed a revised version of the act which included the stipulation that the firearm had, “moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” With this addition Congress supposedly provided constitutional authority for their actions and, while the Supreme Court has not revisited the issue, several Appeals Courts have upheld convictions under the new language.

The GFSZA is one of those feel-good laws that so often pass in the wake of a tragedy – the Stockton, California schoolyard shooting, in this case – which do nothing to address the problem, but which leave a wake of unintended consequences. The GFSZA did nothing to prevent the rash of school shootings that plagued the nation in the 1990s.

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Protecting the Second Amendment is Not Enough

               At last count, a full half of the US Senate had signed onto a July letter to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declaring their opposition to any United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which includes infringement on US citizens’ rights to possess firearms. While I applaud this effort, I have to say that I’m disappointed in the senators’ narrow focus in the letter. Protecting the Second Amendment and warning Obama and Clinton not to agree to any treaty which might infringe on the rights of Americans ignores what the UN is doing to citizens of other countries. The right to arms is not just an American right, it is a basic human right extrapolated from the right to self-defense. Human beings have an individual right to defend themselves and their families, and citizens – regardless of what country – have a moral obligation to also defend others who are unable to defend themselves.

If the UN were forwarding a plan to limit voting to males only or to institute broad government controls over the press, our senators would not stop at our constitution and our borders in their denunciation of the plans. Instead they would expound upon the importance of universal suffrage and the necessity of a free press – for all people everywhere. They would not just “strongly encourage” the administration to “uphold our country’s constitutional protections,” they would demand that the administration reject and actively oppose any treaty which could be in any way construed to support such restrictions on basic rights in any nation.

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Antis: Wisconsin Too Drunk for Concealed Carry

              Dire predictions were once again flowing from Americas Dairyland as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker prepared to sign a bill providing for some state-approved citizens to carry concealed firearms. An Associated Press story in last Sunday’s Chicago Tribune breathlessly warned that “city officials and business owners around the state will only have four months to figure out how to comply with the law while also keeping citizens and customers safe.” And, using language straight from the Brady/Violence Policy playbook, that “law enforcement agencies will need to prepare for the possibility of more people carrying hidden guns in public.” The article does go on to include some of the arguments of supporters of the bill, but the clear intent of the article is to gin up fear and doubt among citizens, neighbors, and business owners.

The blood-in-the-streets mantra, which has been repeated each time any state or municipality has introduced or passed concealed carry laws or expanded recognition of firearms rights, seems to finally be losing its steam, though as Wisconsin is the 49^th state to enact some form of concealed carry and the predictions of bedlam have never once come true. Even the one law enforcement official the AP could find to comment against the new law, Grant County Sheriff Keith Govier, admitted that his peers in other states had told him that while they had expected additional problems when concealed carry laws were passed in their states, such problems had never materialized. Still, Grovier expressed concern for the safety of officers making late night traffic stops or responding to domestic violence incidents where an “angry suspect has quick access to the gun,” but he then noted that most of the armed citizens they might encounter would be hunters or business owners who are unlikely to represent a threat.

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Demand Gunwalker Accountability

                Most of the larger national media outlets are doing their best to ignore the Gunwalker scandal, but the word is dribbling out despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration and their lackeys in the mainstream press. Those who know about the outrageous project should be demanding answers and accountability.

The recent hearings in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), showed clearly that agents of the ATF and other agencies, working with the approval from the highest levels of the Department of Justice – no more than one desk below Attorney General Erik Holder, if not Holder himself – actively conspired and facilitated the sale of some 2000 or more rifles to suspected illegal firearms traffickers and then intentionally allowed those guns to continue in illicit channels with no attempt to track, interdict, or disable them. ATF field agents who objected to the program were threatened and rebuked. On one occasion an agent pointed out that people were being killed with guns supplied by the ATF and his manager responded with the callous cliché that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

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Dear Republicans

               Could we please have a serious, pro-rights, pro-Constitution candidate for the office of President this time? For the past several elections you have passed over good, pro-rights, pro-Constitution candidates – or never come up with any – in favor of wishy-washy “moderates” with poll-based values and elastic principles. Make no mistake: the rights movement, and the wide array of activists concerned about constitutional liberty and restoration of the Republic, will not endorse, support, or actively work for any candidate who does not have a proven record of personal commitment to the Constitution and individual liberty.

Please do not be suckered into nominating another bland “moderate” based on the lie of “electability.” The question of a person’s electability can only be definitively answered in a flat-out run for office. Anything short of that is just speculation.

Granted, some would-be candidates are clearly unelectable from the start. Others are obviously long shots. But the only way to get a candidate’s true measure is to give your support to the candidate – or candidates – who best represent your values and vision for the nation and do your best to push that – or those – candidate(s) to the top of the list in the primaries, straw polls, and other preliminary popularity contests. Don’t let the pundits, the experts, pragmatists, “moderates,” or the mainstream media convince you that you should throw your support behind a candidate who doesn’t reflect your values and vision based on a wholly manufactured concept of electability.

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Who does speak for gun owners?

If you put six gun rights advocates in a room they will come out with at least seven different opinions on how we should proceed in the fight. The fact is that in the gun rights war, as in any other endeavor which inflames people’s passions, an organization can maintain unity of spirit and clarity of focus right up to the point that the second person joins. That’s when words like “Principle,” “Respect,” and “Communication” become extremely important – and the more people you add, the more important, and complicated those words become. While we each understand (to a degree) our own motivations, principles, goals, and fears, we don’t always communicate them clearly and we often don’t understand at all what is moving the other guy. My father used to express the phenomenon by saying, “Everybody in this outfit is crazy except you and me.  And I’m not so sure about you!”

Unfortunately it is all too often an accurate sentiment. When people feel passionately about something – particularly something which can not be scientifically quantified – they tend to either develop their own belief structure around the subject or cling tightly to a structure advocated by someone else – to the exclusion of all other opinions, theories, approaches, and ideas. The fact is that anyone who identifies himself with a movement − regardless of the movement or its objectives − has already separated himself from the herd.  By their nature, movement people are oddballs.  They think independently and will follow a leader as long as that leader is going in the “right” direction − as they define it.  Movements, and movement people, work best when they are dealing with generalities. They can unanimously call for gun rights, lower taxes, limited government, or whatever. Start getting down into the particulars of the rallying cry, however, and the movement tends to lose focus. Some always want to charge on to total victory while others advocate a more cautious approach and few can completely agree on fundamentals − like specifically which guns where, what taxes, how low, and to the detriment of what government services, or how “limited” government should be.

Continue reading Who Speaks for Gun Owners? →