{"id":4336,"date":"2009-03-05T13:02:36","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T18:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4336"},"modified":"2009-03-05T13:04:01","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T18:04:01","slug":"as-useful-as-turn-signals-on-a-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4336","title":{"rendered":"As Useful As Brake Lights On A Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Among gun controllers, there&#8217;s been one pretty consistent strategy in effect for the past thirty years:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pick a lie about guns and gun owners<\/li>\n<li>Run with it for all it&#8217;s worth&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;until it gets debunked too roundly and widely to be tenable even among liberals<\/li>\n<li>Find a new one.<\/li>\n<li>Repeat.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>How many have we been through in the past thirty years?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Saturday Night Specials&#8221;<\/strong>: In the sixties and seventies, these inexpensive, &#8220;low-quality&#8221; handguns were the shrieking point <em>du jour.\u00a0 <\/em>Although they served largely as a means of self-defense for poor people, the restrictions on their manufacture and sale were supposed to clean up the inner city.\u00a0 We know how that worked, right?<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Gun-Free Zones&#8221;<\/strong>: In the seventies, the National Coalition to Ban Handguns circulated &#8220;Gun Free Home&#8221; stickers to members who wanted to put their principles in writing on their front doors.\u00a0 These quickly fell out of circulation when it was realized that homes posted as &#8220;gun free&#8221; were about an order of magnitude more likely to get burgled, robbed or otherwise attacked.\u00a0 The gun control movement then took that precise logic and moved it to schools, malls, colleges &#8211; with results that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=728\">any sane person could have foreseen<\/a> from the first go-&#8217;round.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Assault Weapons&#8221;<\/strong>: This term &#8211; which is, by the way, an entirely political term, having no meaning in the world of firearms whatsoever &#8211; was originally a precaution against &#8220;white supremacist militias&#8221;.\u00a0 Remember when they were the boogieman\u00a0<em>du jour<\/em>?\u00a0\u00a0Look for this one to make a comeback, with the Obama administration\u00a0claiming that Mexican\u00a0<em>narcotraficantes <\/em>would eschew real, fully-automatic military weapons (like the AK-series, the Uzi, or the magnicent Heckler and Koch G-3, built in Germany and\u00a0the official assault rifle\u00a0of the Mexican armed forces)\u00a0available to them for a fraction of the price of the semi-automatic-only versions available to them from Americans at many times the price.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Unregulated Sales&#8221;<\/strong>: Another supposed source of (overpriced, under-powerful) weapons to Mexico&#8230;well, let&#8217;s see to his one below.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a &#8220;Gun Show Loophole&#8221; bill making its inevitable way through the Minnesota Legislature, sponsored by Michael Paymar, a St. Paul legislator and one of the most incoherent anti-gun legislators in a metro-DFL contingent that beings new meaning to the term &#8220;scared into incontinence&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I was going to write about it &#8211; but <a href=\"http:\/\/looktruenorth.com\/liberty\/right-to-keep-and-bear-arms\/7199-minnesotas-own-gun-show-bill.html\">Kevin Ecker does it better anyway<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/looktruenorth.com\/liberty\/right-to-keep-and-bear-arms\/7199-minnesotas-own-gun-show-bill.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.looktruenorth.com\/images\/FreedomDogs\/looktruenorthsmall140.png\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco &#038; Firearms <span style=\"font-weight: bold\">less than 1 in 50 guns<\/span> acquired by criminals come from gun shows or private resales.\u00a0 A January 2009 Star-Tribune article says that the Twin Cities\u2019 homicide problem is largely one of uncontrolled gang\/drug activity. Anyone who can sell or purchase illegal drugs can acquire a gun in that illegal transaction. This is a black market transaction, not a legitimate sale by law-abiding citizens.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t be fooled, this bill does NOTHING to prevent the former, but everything to impede the latter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a Second Amendment advocate, I could almost set up a hot key that&#8217;d type &#8220;howzabout we enforce existing laws&#8221;?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Because, it should surprise nobody, laws that already control the source of <em>most <\/em>guns to <em>most real <\/em>criminals have been on the books forever:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Minnesota statutes already contain FOUR (4) provisions to cut off \u201cblack market\u201d transfers. They are: (1) 609.52 \u2013 Theft by the criminal himself, (2) 609; (2) 609.53 \u2013 Theft-once-removed by acquisition from a \u201cfence;\u201d (3) 609.66 sibd. 1c \u2013 Receipt from an accomplice\/strawman; and (4) 624.7141 \u2013 Transfer to an ineligible person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ecker has the real motivation figured out:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Of course, proponents try to justify all this by claiming the bill will make it illegal to transfer handguns and &#8220;assault weapons&#8221; to criminals.\u00a0 Of course what they don&#8217;t mention is this is already illegal (<span class=\"postbody\"><a class=\"postlink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us\/statutes\/?id=609.66#stat.609.66.1f\" target=\"_blank\"><font color=\"#990000\">Minn. Stat. 609.66 subd. 1f<\/font><\/a><\/span>)!\u00a0 So really all this does is make life difficult for law-abiding citizens.\u00a0 It does NOTHING to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.\u00a0 Of course if they had paid attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/ideas.repec.org\/p\/nbr\/nberwo\/14371.html\" target=\"_blank\"><font color=\"#990000\">studies done on similiar California laws<\/font><\/a>, they&#8217;d already know that!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>True.\u00a0 But being a gun controller is never about evidence, fact, ethics or law.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s about manipulating emotions to get ones&#8217; way, and preying on ignorance.<\/p>\n<p>As this past election showed in Minnesota as elsewhere, there&#8217;s no money in betting against rank, wishful ignorance these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among gun controllers, there&#8217;s been one pretty consistent strategy in effect for the past thirty years: Pick a lie about guns and gun owners Run with it for all it&#8217;s worth&#8230; &#8230;until it gets debunked too roundly and widely to be tenable even among liberals Find a new one. Repeat. How many have we been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}