gun control

Supreme Court Upholds Gun Rights

Featured image Today the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to a New York State law that barred residents from obtaining a carry permit unless they could show “proper cause.” Proper cause, in turn, required the applicant to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” Under the Court’s controlling precedents, Heller and McDonald, I think the New York »

In re: The “do something” bill

Featured image The Federalist has just posted David Harsanyi’s column on “The ‘do something’ gun control bill.” Harsanyi is the author of The First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun and someone whose opinion I respect. Here is a salient paragraph: [Republican bill sponsor Senator John] Cornyn spent more time bragging about the things he rejected than championing the useful ideas he brought to the bill, because it »

The dog that barks

Featured image The bipartisan Senate group released the text of the “gun bill” or “gun safety bill” or whatever it is just before the Senate voted to proceed on the bill without amendment last night. Taking a look at the text, I see that the bill may be cited as the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” The authors apparently don’t want us to know what it’s all about from the title of the »

Stephen Hunter: The massacre spree that never was

Featured image Stephen Hunter retired as the Pulitzer Prize-winning chief film critic of The Washington Post in 2008 and is the author of the Bob Lee Swagger novels. His most recent is Targeted, published earlier this year. Inspired by recent events, he sent us this column. * * * * * Possibly you’re old enough to remember the great massacre spree of 1964? Classrooms shot up, strip malls decimated, scout troops blown »

Senate Gun Deal Looks OK [Updated]

Featured image A bipartisan group of senators have announced an agreement on gun legislation. I am not sure whether their deal has been reduced to legislative language, and I don’t know whether it will get through the Senate, or whether Democrats in the House will vote for it. (If I were a Democrat, I would think that the deal is extremely weak, and its main effect may be to take gun control »

Why McConnaughey?

Featured image The White House served up Hollywood star Matthew McConnaughey to lecture us on the virtues of assorted gun control proposals yesterday. He emotes more effectively than press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, but what does he have to offer? He is a native of Uvalde. He feels strongly about the Uvalde massacre. He doesn’t think too much of the Second Amendment. He has a superficial above-it-all take on the culture war. He »

Naked came the gunman

Featured image New York Post columnist Miranda Devine and two Post reporters have obtained a video of Hunter “casually wav[ing] around a handgun” and “point[ing] it at the camera while cavorting with a nude hooker in a swank hotel room[.]” The video was provided to The Post by the nonprofit Marco Polo research group. The Post story runs as “Packin’ heat: Nude Hunter Biden cavorts with hooker, illegal gun in latest mess »

A Sensible Position On Crime and Guns

Featured image I haven’t written much about the latest round of gun control hysteria, mostly because I have said everything I have to say on that topic many times over the years. The liberal solutions to mass shooting incidents, which are very rare, are every bit as silly and ineffective as their solutions to crime in general, which is ubiquitous and therefore vastly more important. Defunding the police makes about as much »

At General Mills, gum control needed

Featured image General Mills is in the news today for caving in to demands that it abandon a “controversial Pillsbury plant in the West Bank,” as the Star Tribune puts it this morning. BDS advocates claim victory. Speaking for itself, General Mills states: “We have made clear the global business strategy that drove this decision.” The company’s headquarters are located in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Yesterday we heard from a Power Line reader »

Support gum control

Featured image Watching President Biden rattle on last night — the White House has posted the transcript here — I thought it was time to get serious about gum control. Yes, it’s time for Biden to quit flapping his gums with the usual dynamics ranging from a whisper to a shout in the deranged old-man style to which we have become accustomed. Biden himself appeared to have gum control in the back »

Peak Futility

Featured image The latest school shooting incident has prompted–indeed, prompted before the victims had even been buried–the usual stale anti-gun proposals. Once again, Democrats are pushing for a ban on “assault weapons,” by which they mean semiautomatic rifles that don’t have wooden stocks. My Marlin 60 has a wooden stock, so it is safe from the Democrats. It is a classic semiautomatic rifle that fathers often give their sons as a 15th »

Biden shooting blanks (again)

Featured image Yesterday at the White House executive-order signing ceremony commemorating the death of George Floyd, President Biden unleased a false bromide that he has often repeated (transcript here): I spent my career, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as Vice President, working for commonsense gun reforms — as I said, as a senator and a Vice President. While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will »

What happened in Uvalde

Featured image As reporters ascertain what happened during the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, we have more to process. The Associated Press has reconstructed events outside the school during the shooting before and after the heroic Border Patrol agent entered the building. The AP story is “Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school.” The story opens: Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s »

Greatest. Correction. Ever.

Featured image That’s a tall statement, and I didn’t think a major media organization could beclown itself more than the Washington Post a couple days ago with this howler: “Layers and layers of fact-checkers,” as Instapundit likes to remind us. But to paraphrase the post-modernist philosopher Hans Gruber, “I give you: Time. Magazine.” Here’s the original: Actually, Time was closer to being right the first time (especially since “Beto” isn’t his real »

What To Do About School Shootings?

Featured image Salvador Ramos’s evil rampage in Uvalde, Texas has had the inevitable consequence: it was politicized within minutes by Democrats calling for more gun control. Michael Moore, at least, was honest. He said the Second Amendment should be repealed. That, one suspects, is what many Democrats want, but most aren’t bold enough to say it. Instead, they beat around the bush, like Joe Biden who blamed the Uvalde murders on the »

Bedtime for Beto

Featured image Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke disrupted Governor Greg Abbott’s press conference called to update the public on yesterday’s school shooting. O’Rourke is one of the breed of politicians — politicians without a conscience and with no thought other than themselves — that finds the moment of unspeakable tragedy fit to undertake histrionic displays and hysterical lectures promoting their favored causes. I can’t believe this is even good »

Disconsolate in Uvalde

Featured image We are still processing the tragedy yesterday in Uvalde, Texas. The Associated Press has just posted the story “Gunman kills 19 children, 2 adults in Texas school rampage” with the latest information as of this morning. (The comparable Reuters story is here.) The scene is still being processed and the count may or may not be final. At the moment we can only pray: pray that the facts will be »