Gun Free Zone

We have lost one of our commenters due to violation of The One Rule.

The rule is still in effect even if you were kind enough to support us by purchasing a subscription.

AWA for the GFZ admin team

Shot:

Chaser:

This person is a nursing professor.

Presumably she’s is, or at one time was, a practicing nurse.

If she feels this way about a town, how would she feel about a patient?

If a patient came in, in a MAGA hat, or a conservative theme shirt, or gave some other indication that they were Right Wing, would she treat them?

Would she provide them with adequate medical care?

Or would she leave them to suffer and die?

This shit shows how broken some people are and how you can’t trust our system anymore.

B.L.U.F. An example of winning in court. Oregon’s legislature rushes to moot cases and to fix parts of Measure 114.

H/T Bh.Z and OFF

On January 9th, 2023 Senate Bill 348 was introduced. The bill was short. It was a bill giving the Oregon Department of Justice a requirement to …study ways to address the unlawful possession of firearms.— Senate Bill 348. The DoJ was given until December 31,2024 to provide the report back to the legislature. On January 2, 2025 the first section of the bill would be repealed.

On its face this doesn’t sound all that bad, directing some government entity to do a study is a way of spending taxpayer money to get “facts” to use against The People in infringement cases, but better a study than another infringement.

Oregon Firearms Federation sent an alert telling its members that this was a bill to observe as it was likely there as a gut and stuff bill. Often times a legislature has rules to protect The People from the state. Things like a bill must be read 3 times before it can be voted on. That there must be a certain amount of time between readings. That the bill has to be analyzed by the appropriate committees to make sure it will be “legal”.

But there is an important part of these rules to remember, amendments are not subject to the same rules. The idea being that members have had enough time to analyze the bill and are not going to propose “fixes” and “changes” to make the bill better. When those amendments are presented the body votes and if the amendment gets enough votes the amendment is applied to the bill.

If the bill is in both chambers of a bicameral legislature there will be a reconciliation phase that takes place if the two bills are actually different. If both the Senate and the House versions are the same then it is deemed to have been reconciled and it moves forward to the Governor or President for signature to turn the bill into a law.

A “gut and stuff” bill is a bill that is specifically designed for this amendment process. When the bill is read an amendment is offered that “guts” the entire text of the bill and then “stuffs” entirely new content in place of the original text. Suddenly you have a bill with the same identifiers that has been through the pre-vote approval process with totally new content ready for a vote.

This is where the famous Nancy statement comes from “We have to pass the bill to see what is in it.” The bill in question then was ObamaCare and it was gut and stuffed into an entirely different bill with a short timeline to a vote. With 2000+ pages of new text it was impossible for any one person toi read the entire bill before the vote.

In infringement bills it is often the case that they legislature doesn’t want The People to have time to react.

The watchers have to spot the bill. They have to see the amendment go into place. They have to craft an alert. The alert has to make it to The People and only then can The People respond with email, calls and faxes.

In person responses take even long. This is why the NYS S.A.F.E act was so bad on a procedural level. Even though there are laws in place to give people time to respond, the infringers got it passed in an emergency session before those alerts and responses could take place.

With the NYS CCIA the republicans only had the press release until the very last minute. It wasn’t possible to respond until they got the text of the bill and they didn’t get the text until the last minute.

Oregon Senate Bill 348 – Amended

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My first one in over 20 years and I was and was not disappointed.

But first, let’s play Gun Show Bingo!

Beef Jerky? Check!
Cheap, crappy nylon holsters? Check!
Free Space
Nazi Memorabilia? Check!
Fantasy Knives’ booth with ninja stuff? Check!
BINGO!

One big difference from the shows back in South Florida was the variety of firearms, especially old classics bolt actions. Most of them were in great shape indicating lots of love and care through the years. AR 15s are the kings of modern rifles, followed by the AK variants in a distant second place. I was amazed to see one SCAR and no Styers. About equal parts of new and used handguns including one booth with several Colt 1903s and a couple of stands with a good variety of revolvers, old and new and all insanely expensive. The prices of all guns are still absurd, including SKS for $650 the cheapest!

Ammo was plentiful but other than a small reduction in 9mm, the prices are still absurd. I refused to pay almost $50 for a box of .357 Magnum and I am happy I still have some from Remington for defensive use bought long ago and plenty of components for reloading. Speaking or reloading, there was next to zero on that area. I think I saw one 8# jug of some old powder, some bullets and cases (I have more in my stash) and ZERO primers. Some used dies in uncommon calibers and one RCBS press made for all Reloading in the show.

The best of show was the people: Friendly and talkative which I enjoyed to interact with, even though I am not gregarious or enjoy crowds at all. Amazingly very little political chat was overheard, but then again, I was not looking for it.

I did try to buy a muzzleloader, but the wife vetoed the idea with fury. I really don’t know why she was so against it, but I know better than contradicting her.

Here is a pic.

DeSantis got re-elected, turned most of Florida a solid Republican red and helped deliver 29 electoral votes for Trump. And I won’t even get into the how DeSantis weathered the COVID bullshit and kept the state into becoming a shithole.

Being better than him seem to be an unforgiving sin for Trump.

But when he insults DeSantis, he also insults those of us who voted for the governor.

As of right now, my next presidential ballot will not be check-marked for Trump if he is the one selected to run for President under the Republican ticket. If he stops behaving like a disgruntled carpetbagger and apologizes, I may reconsider.

Matt is out there fighting for the safety of the people of New Jersey. You know this because Louis tells you so. But it is fun to look some of the fun things he has to say Here in New Jersey, we have the fourth-strongest gun laws in the country. We also have the third-lowest rate of firearm deaths in the country and the lowest rate of firearm ownership with just 8.9% of New Jersey households reporting to own firearms. Id.

Is he proud his state has some of the worse gun right infringements in the country. He is proud of the infringements in the concealed carry permitting. He is proud of the infringements on individuals making firearms. He is proud of the infringements on people right to purchase firearms without permission. He is proud of being a tyrant.

But he is very upset that some people aren’t taking a knee to these infringements. Unfortunately, this was almost instantly challenged by gun-rights groups who claimed the law was unconstitutional because it violated the Second Amendment. id.. Yep, you read that right, they claim it was an infringement, not that it was.

And it just gets worse for him. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Constitution provides a right to carry a gun outside the home Id. How horrible it is that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Bruen that Heller is still good law and that if it is an arm in common use it is covered by the Second Amendment and if it is even a little infringement it is too much.

So Louis doesn’t get to have Matt go to the courts and whine that his law should make people safer so it should pass constitutional muster.

But let’s take a look at some of Louis’s claims, that New Jersey is somehow special in the reduction of violent crimes. Of course he might be cherry picking to just crimes committed with firearms:

Every statistic tracked in violent crime in the FBI’s UCR shows that crime is decreasing. That might be meaningful.
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There is a store here in Murfreesboro when I go to get my Venezuelan coffee to brew and other treats that my wife became addicted while we lived down there.  To my surprise, today I found the brand of malta (non-alcoholic malt beverage brewed from barley, hops and other things) that I loved since I was a tiny tot.

After chugging half the can of the almost frozen delight, I realized that this company had closed down during the mid Presidency of Hugo Chavez alongside many other private enterprises. Naturally my curiosity was piqued as to where the old elixir was being produced and I was a bit (a lot) surprised):

Poland? And for a Miami company? At first, I was upset, this is a brand that was not only truly a part of Venezuela but represented my home city.  Many hot tropical days through my life were chilled with a cold bottle or can of Malta Caracas and many discussions were help among friends who swore by it versus the uncouth who liked the competitor Maltin Polar. And it was indeed a sad day when I found out that the company had shut down, unable to deal with the communist idiocies of Asshole Hugo and his band of thieving Communists.

And then, the idea that the former communist country who gave the USSR so much agita is producing my beverage of love for a company in Miami, struck me as a beautiful irony and had to chuckle.

Sometime life balances itself.