In the wake of San Bernardino and the high profile shootings that proceeded it, the propaganda arm of the Democrat party fourth estate conducted two polls to find out how Americans felt about a new assault weapons ban.  ABC found that  53% of people OPPOSING a new AWB and the New York Times got about the same numbers with some 50% of people OPPOSING a new AWB.  The rationale being that an AWB really won’t do much to stop a “lone wolf” attack.

Common sense and gun rights seem to be winning on this issue.

Month after month we have been seeing record gun sales. When New York and Connecticut managed to pass assault weapon bans and registrations, the compliance rate with these laws was about 4% and 10% respectively.

A small but loud an obnoxious group of people supported by a confederacy of felons clamors for a new gun ban.

The rest of the country is spending its hard earned money on handguns and black rifles, and when asked about their purchases, tell the government “piss off, that’s a golf club, I want a lawyer.”

How do the House Democrats react to all of these data points?  By drafting a new assault weapons ban.  Sure, it has no hope of passing with a GOP majority.  But I’m not so sure the 90 Democrats who co-signed it have any idea what they’ve done to themselves.

A few of them may be in such deep blue districts they they have no chance in losing reelection.  But the rest of them? We’ll have a change come November of next year to show them what the popular opinion on guns bans is.

Back in 2012, I watched with embarrassment, Obama make a statement about the Navy that was so ridiculous that on that statement alone, he shouldn’t have been reelected.

Tonight I watched the GOP primary candidates fail to answer a question about the US nuclear triad correctly.

So I would like to put on my best politician voice and address these two political points from a strategic and historical perspective.

*Clears throat*

“Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to explain exactly why it is critical to build up the United States Navy, and why it should be the priority when we update our nuclear armament.

The United States Navy is the big swinging dick of American foreign policy.

When you need a country occupied, ground held, you call the Army.

When you want complete air superiority, you call the Air Force.

But when you want to stare down some petulant piss-ant warlord or megalomaniac dictator, and remind him who’s boss, you park a United States Navy carrier group off the coast of his country.  That is two-hundred-thousand tons of sovereign United States, manned by some 7,500 of our nation’s best, deployable anywhere in the world in 24 hours, armed to the fucking teeth, and ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

If we want to bomb said warlord’s bunker, we can have an F-18 super hornet delivering ordinance in minutes from the deck of a carrier.

If we want to turn his favorite desert campsite into a crater, we can launch a Tomahawk missile from a destroyer.

If we want to capture his ass, we can deploy the SEALS.

If we just want to stomp his militia into paste, we send in the Marines.

The Army and the Air Force, we have to deploy either from stateside or a regional base.  We have to create a staging location from which we can deploy those forces.  It takes weeks and months to mount an operation like that.

The Navy is just there, waiting to kick some ass.

If the sheer intimidation factor of a carrier strike group isn’t enough to get what we want, we can always introduce Supreme Leader Shit-for-Brains to the wonder that is the Ohio Class Guided Missile Submarine.

We have 18 of them.  Silent holes the water.  Undetectable.  We can just about sail one of these into his asshole and he wouldn’t notice until his toilet paper comes back covered with anti-fouling paint.

Each armed with 24 Trident Missiles.  Each missile capable of delivering eight, 100 kiloton, W76 thermonuclear warheads.  Never mind waiting for a B2 stealth bomber to fly half way around the world.  We have nukes on demand and can have them detonated on target before Supreme Leader Shit-for-Brains can get his ballistic missiles pointed skywards.

And that ladies and gentlemen is the entire point of the Navy.  For when we need to fuck up another country and not have to wait to do it.  We can put the Navy where we want it, where we think it needs to be, to hang it over the heads of anybody who forgets that the United States is the biggest bad ass on the block.  It is the very tip of the spear.  It is the big stick.  I intent to poke those who mean us harm with it to remind them of their place in the world, and if they act up, I will speak softly, and beat them to fucking death with it.”

I saw your interview with Seth Meyers, where you talked about gun control.  In it, you discussed the need for “common sense gun control” and to close several “loopholes.”  At first, it was obvious to me that you really don’t know what you are talking about.

1. The gun show loophole.  You mean the ability for individuals to sell a limited number of personal firearms in a year in face-to-face transfers?  Because FFL dealers must have buyers fill out Form 4473’s and perform NICS checks at guns shows.  Gun Shows are not gun law free bazaars.
2. The online loophole.  You mean were anybody can sell a gun online… and then have to ship it to an FFL to do a Form 4473 and NICS check on the buyer.  Of course an online seller can to an in-state face-to-face transfer in a state where it is legal, but most don’t.  This used to be called the “classified ad loophole” back when people still read newspapers.
3. The Charleston loophole.  Where if a NICS check doesn’t come back  with a “deny” in three days, the sale can proceed.  That one is necessary to keep politicians (like you, potentially) from enacting a gun ban, by just holding off all NICS checks indefinitely.
4. Universal background checks.  The idea that the guy who is fencing stolen guns to criminals can be persuaded to perform background checks on them.  Or the idea there is no such thing as Straw Purchases.  Really, universal background checks are just a potential annoyance for the law abiding shooter whose shooting buddy want to make him a better offer than the local gun store on a trade in.

Had you stopped there, I would have just let your interview go, recognizing the usual Liberal Democrat, know-nothing, anti-gun, bullshit talking points.

But you had to go one further and “repeal the immunity from all liability that gun makers and gun sellers have.”  You called for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.  First of all, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act doesn’t provide complete immunity against liability.  It protects gun makers from being sued when criminals commit crimes with guns if the guns were sold by the company legally to law abiding distributors.

On a side note: When CNN calls you out for being wrong, you know you fucked up.

I, like most of the gun community, knows what you are trying to pull.  Gun control is not a winning position to take in America.  Your husband learned that in 1994 after getting the Brady Bill passed.  The Republicans took 54 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate which was due heavily to campaigning by the NRA.

So you want to go after the gun companies with lawfare.   Again, this was something your husband tried, and was somewhat victorious with.  He got Smith and Wesson to acquiesce on backing gun control by agreeing to settle on some lawsuits.  The CSGV went after the ammo retailer Lucky Gunner after Sandy Hook, and got their asses handed to them with a dismissal and $203,000 in legal fees.  The CSGV made it clear that wanted to put Lucky Gunner out of business.

It’s clear you want to pave the way for individuals, probably with the backing of the DOJ, to sue gun makers out of existence.  If you can’t ban guns, shut down the gun makers.

Logically, your position makes no sense.  If a drunk driver runs over a little kid, the parents can’t sue Ford for making the car.  Even Bernie Sanders has enough decency and common sense to understand that “If somebody has a gun and it falls into the hands of a murderer and the murderer kills somebody with a gun, do you hold the gun manufacturer responsible? Not any more than you would hold a hammer company responsible if somebody beats somebody over the head with a hammer.”

The thing is, you are hitting just a little too close to home for me.  I am part of the firearms industry.  You are taking about taking away my livelihood.  I have a wife, a baby, a couple of dogs, a car payment, a mortgage, and student loans.  I go to work, to a job I love.  I work with wonderful people who also love their jobs. We sell guns for people just like us: hunters, sportsmen, target shooters, people who want to ability to defend themselves.  We are a strong part of the local economy.  We are the middle class that you claim to want to help.

You are not just threatening my guns, you are threatening my home, my career, my ability to put food on my table.

I can only hope the other people, working in other industries understand what you are.  How easy it is for you to want to put tens of thousands of people out of work, and cost the economy millions and billions of dollars because you don’t like the products we sell.  This isn’t about saving lives.  This isn’t about preventing the next terrorist attack or mass shooting.  This is about hurting your enemies.

This I will not abide.

From the bottom of my heart, and with the deepest sincerity, FUCK YOU!

J.Kb. (Registered Voter)

I used to like The Daily Show.  I know the Jon Stewart was a liberal and his show had a Left leaning bias, but so is pretty much every other news show on TV.  What Jon Steward had going for him was that he was genuinely funny, and he dished it out to the left as well, calling out liberals on their incompetence and hypocrisy.

Trevor Noah, the new anchor of The Daily Show is no Jon Steward.  With him at the helm, The Daily Show has become a mean spirited hatchet-job against the Right.  On Friday, The Daily Show did a bit on concealed carry and active shooters.  They went out to mock the idea that what it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun and shill for gun control.  What they created was so bad it will actually make you dumber watching it.

So brace yourselves…

The only statement made that was completely honest and accurate is that the correspondent, Jordan Kelpper, is an “idiot with a gun.”  I know The Daily Show is a comedy show, but the behavior of the correspondent in the range was down right embarrassing.  Honestly, I wouldn’t have tossed him from my class.  Guns are serious.  Fun, but serious.

First and foremost, the continuous lie pushed by antis and now The Daily Show is that “it’s so easy for people to get CCW permits, that any idiot can get a permit and we’ll end up with a whole bunch of idiots carrying guns in public.”  This is usually followed by argument “these untrained idiots will only make any situation worse.”

Let me start with my credentials on this issue.  I have CCW permits from UT, AZ, FL, IL, and AL, and I used to have permits from SD and IN, but those states don’t allow for non-residents permits.  I have been a CCW permit instructor.

Virtually every person I have sat through a CCW class with or have taught was a shooter before applying for their permit.  In my experience, people who get their carry permits regularly practice with their carry guns.  Concealed carry is a right in most states, a permit, and more importantly a mindset and a lifestyle.  That is what never gets touched on and The Daily Show went out of its way to ignore.  What I never see is the pubic discussion about permit holders who shoot weekly or monthly, maintaining their skill at personal expense.

The reason, I believe, that this never gets addressed is that there is no way for those who advocate for bigger and more overbearing government to slap their magic seal of government approval on individual practice or readiness.  An NYPD officer shooting 50 rounds every 6 months, is what qualifies as a “professional” in the mind of an anti.  A civilian with a CCW permit shooting several hundred rounds every few months more more… well.. that just doesn’t count.

With his CCW in hand, the correspondent heads over to The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program and gets shot to pieces with Simunitions.  Proving that The Daily Show really doesn’t get it.

It is the duty of police to run towards the gunfire.  They are first responders.  Call 911 and they should show up.

CCW permit holders are not first reposonders.  It’s not our job to run towards the gunfire.  When an emergency happens near me, 911 doesn’t connect to my cell phone.  In an active shooter scenario, I’m not going to advance on a shooter.  Let the men with rifles and hard armor do that.

Ultimately, The Daily Show, after making fun of millions Americans with CCW permits, doesn’t give an alternative solution.

“Could we just figure out a way to just not put a gun in this asshole’s [pointing at the mock active shooter] hands?”

GREAT!  Except:

1. Even Liberals were forced to acknowledge that all the gun laws they have passed in places like California, failed to stop mass shootings like in San Bernardino, Oregon, or elsewhere.  Especially when guns are obtained through illegal straw purchases or stolen.  They have yet to propose new gun control laws that can guarantee no more mass shootings.
2. If you find yourself in an active shooter situation, what do you do?  Just sit there and wait for death?  The FBI has acknowledge that sometimes you have no choice but to fight, if running or hiding aren’t options.

It’s easy to criticize, it’s hard to propose meaningful solutions; which is The Daily Show’s modus operandi.  In this case, the mockery does real damage.  Reducing concealed carry is not going to make anybody safer in an active shooter scenario, and will probably make things a whole lot worse.

You want to figure out how to keep guns out of the hands of potential mass shooters WITHOUT infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens, I’m all ears.  But I haven’t heard one proposal that would do that.

I’d much rather the police take on an active shooter.  But they can’t be everywhere all the time, and even some police are recognizing the effect armed citizens can have in preventing mass shooters.

But calling CCW permit holders idiots with guns because we’ve (by and large) never been to a LEO training academy is ridiculous.

I don’t carry because I go looking for trouble.  I carry just in case trouble finds me.

Dear President Obama and Members of the Untied States Congress,

I have heard a lot of talk about the desire for universal background checks.  As I understand it, the desire (mainly by the Left) is to make it such that every gun transfer, gift and sale, in the US must involve a background check of the recipient.  The idea is that this will prevent criminals from using individual gun sales to get guns they could not buy in stores.  The reality is that most criminals get guns from people they know, mostly other criminals, and when they do come from stores, they are straw purchased.  Activities rendering the NICS system irrelevant.

But in the wake of a number of high profile shootings, you feel like you have to do something.  So allow me to propose a universal background check compromise.  I lived in Illinois, which had a universal background check law, so I’m going to model this off that, plus some extra.  Keep in mind, that compromise means “you give up something to get something.”  Furthermore, this is not comprehensive, more details will need to be hashed out.

The Law

Here is what you get for universal background checks:

The PERMANENT transfer of a firearm, between two private parties, as a gift, sale, or inheritance must be accompanied by a NICS background check on the recipient.

This is null between immediate family members (parents, children, grandparents, siblings)

Private transfers must be conducted face-to-face.

A website will be created that allows the recipient to fill out a Form 4473 online, and the transferer to have access to the FBI NICS system.  Neither party has to go to a dealer (FFL) to have a face-to-face transfer processed.  No fee will be levied for access to the NICS website.

Private individuals cannot conduct third party transfers or receive firearms by mail.  Private parties cannot act as a stand-ins for dealers (FFLs).

___________________

Here is what you give up to get it:

Interstate purchase of handguns through dealers.  If you can pass a NICS check for a handgun in your home state, you can pass it in any of the other 49 states, anywhere you can pass a NICS check you can buy a gun.

Short barrel rifles (SBR), short barrel shotguns (SBS), and suppressors are no longer NFA items.  Transfer can be conducted through a normal NICS check.  You can assemble one yourself at home – e.g., if you passed the NICS check for the AR lower, you can stick any upper you want on it, no problem.

The Hughes Amendment of the FOPA is repealed.

___________________

Here is what I’d like to try to get you give up to get it:

A foundation for 50 state, national wide, concealed carry.

Allow gun owners whose “Safe Passage” protection in FOPA was violate to bring suit against the municipality or agency that violated the “Safe Passage” protection in federal court.

___________________

If you want to add some onus to the right of gun ownership for law abiding citizens, you are going to have to take away some other onus.  There is no free lunch.

I wanted to make a comment on Miguel’s last post but as I thought about it, the subject became more of a post in and of itself.

Pinellas County is a rather safe county in Florida, home to St. Petersburg and Clearwater.  It’s a tourist and retirement county, below the national average on unemployment and crime rate.

So why would it have such a murder happy sheriff?  I call it the “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement.”  Remember the movie Rambo: First Blood.

What was the plot:  Rambo, an ex-Army special forces vet, is passing through small town in Washington state.  The sheriff (played by Brian Dennehy) doesn’t like the look of Rambo, thinks he’s a drifter, and drives him out of town.  Rambo says he wants to get a meal before moving on and the sheriff arrests him for vagrancy and tortures him.  Rambo escapes and goes on a rampage.

The “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement”  is that you get sheriffs or police chiefs in power in (usually) low crime areas, and they get it into their heads that “this is my sleepy little town and I’m going to keep is that way with an iron fist.”  They become the kings of their little domains.  I’ve experienced this in Florida a number of times.  I grew up in a little town near South Miami called The Village of Pinecrest.  It had one of the lowest crime neighborhoods in Miami-Dada County.  Pinecrest police patrolled in SWAT gear.  Bal Harbor is a tiny town on Miami Beach, known mostly for having some of the most expensive condos and the most high-end shopping in the state.  Bal Harbor police are Nazis.  They will arrest you for doing 5 over the limit.

It’s not that the Sheriff of Pinellas County is oblivious to the insult he done to his officer’s intelligence or the people of the county.  He doesn’t care.  He is the law.  Nobody is make waves in his county.

But this brings me to my next point.

Is Rambo: First Blood the best Second Amendment supporting movie ever?  I know fans of the 2A love Red Dawn, and the idea of American citizens fighting off in invading army.  But our founding fathers put the 2A in place for the people to defend themselves from tyrannical government.

So… if you have a sheriff, who arrests, tortures, and tries to murder an American citizen, was Rambo exercising his 2A rights as envisioned by our founding fathers?

The CSGV likes to make the idea of “gun owners want a rebellion” against the federal government.  What if it’s just against a sheriff that threatens to murder his own constituents?

Keep in mind, this happened twice before in 20^th century America, the Battle of Athens (1946) and the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921).

In an interview, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said “What I’m observing is that it’s tragic that in the immediate aftermath of a series of high-profile mass shootings people feel like they have to go out and purchase a gun.”

It’s not tragic.  It’s the act of the light bulb going on in the heads of thousands upon thousands of Americans.  Not just are Americans scrambling to buy guns, they are applying to carry them in record numbers.

Most Americans don’t pay attention when the government argues in open court that they have no duty to protect us.  They still trust that the police and federal law enforcement will come running to save us.

But attacks like those in Paris or San Bernardino show that the government can’t protect us.  Not all the time.

Farook and his wife were operating an IED factory out of their home.  They were radicalized overseas and had radical profiles online.  Despite warnings and intelligence, nothing was done to prevent the shooting.

To be fair to the government, the government is comprised of people and people make mistakes.  Doubly, It is hard to protect Americans from other Americans and respect civil liberties at the same time.  Pledging allegiance to ISIS online isn’t exactly a crime, it’s a 1st Amendment protected act (I’m pretty sure that it qualifies as right of association).  Our country was set up to make it difficult for the government to punish people for political or ideological beliefs.

But the point still stands.  The government can’t protect us all the time.  They can never make us 100% safe against attack.  So it is up to us to be our own last line of defense.

Every terrorist attack, every mass shooting, proves that to more and more Americans.  Every single new gun owner.  Every single new carry permit holder.  They are all proof that we can only rely on the government so much, no matter what they say.

They call it tragic.  I call it self reliance.