Second Amendment
February 3, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama is coming to Minneapolis tomorrow to talk guns, his first such foray since he called for increased gun control after the Sandy Hook massacre. Timed, presumably, to coincide with his appearance, Democrats in Minnesota’s legislature have introduced several draconian gun control measures. I wrote here about one of these statutes, which would ban, and provide for confiscation of, all average-sized magazines. Liberals often ridicule gun owners’ fears that
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February 2, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I really, really wanted to shoot today, but wasn’t able to. Why, you might ask? Was I backed up with work? Nope. Did I have a long list of chores to do, to stay in my wife’s good graces? Nope. I was free as a bird. But I couldn’t shoot because, with the exception of 100 rounds of 22LR and the loaded 9 mm magazines that I keep at home
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January 27, 2013 — John Hinderaker
It isn’t just AR-15s that are flying off the shelves. Shooters are also starting to experience a serious shortage of ammunition. This is partly because President Obama is using up so much ammo. He sprang a secret on us in an interview with New Republic, finally letting the cat out of the bag after all these years: Obama says he goes skeet shooting at Camp David “all the time.” Really?
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January 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The city of Chelm figures prominently in traditional Jewish humor, where it appears as a den of supposedly wise fools. You know the type. David Mamet draws on the tradition for his Newsweek cover story/essay “Gun laws and the fools of Chelm.” As you might expect, Mamet has many wise words in the essay. Here he gets around to the subject of guns: Many are opposed to private ownership of
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January 24, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Today Senator Dianne Feinstein unveiled her long-promised legislation to ban “assault weapons.” Since there is no such thing as an assault weapon, we will have to read the text of the law to see what it actually does. So far, I haven’t seen the text anywhere, but Feinstein’s web site has a fairly detailed description of the bill, including a list of the 157 weapons that are specifically banned. News
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
As I wrote here, after the Sandy Hook murders I felt compelled to do something, even if it was only symbolic. So, last month, I joined the NRA, the nation’s most effective civil rights organization, for the first time. It turned out that 250,000 others had the same idea, so the organization was backed up for a while. But a few days ago I got my free NRA range bag,
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January 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you want to know the basic facts about “assault rifles” and “assault weapons,” this primer by Regis Giles at Girls Just Wanna Have Guns is an excellent summary. Giles’s exhortation to young women not to be victims was one of the highlights of CPAC 2011. An excerpt: The second correct definition of an assault rifle is based on cosmetic features set by politicians. These rifles are all semi-automatic, or
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January 18, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The folks at Intellectual Takeout sent us this image, which they describe as their most popular ever: As Steve might say: Discuss.
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January 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I wrote this post for The Corner, in an ecumenical spirit: President Obama unveiled his proposals to combat gun violence today, and they turned out to be anti-climactic. There were no surprises, unless you expected him to mention the culture of violence fostered by Democratic Party donors in Hollywood and the video game industry. He didn’t. The administration’s gun proposals turned out to be retreads. Obama could have tried something
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January 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Rick Perry has presided for some years now over America’s most successful state. His track record of success is unmatched, so his voice should be listened to. This is what he had to say about Barack Obama’s gun control pronouncements: The Vice President’s committee was appointed in response to the tragedy at Newtown, but very few of his recommendations have anything to do with what happened there. Guns require a
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January 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t noticed any “military-style assault weapon” exception in the Second Amendment, especially since a “military-style assault weapon” is not one with military capabilities, i.e. an automatic weapon–illegal for civilian use since the 1930s–but rather is one that looks vaguely scary to the ill-informed. So the Obama administration isn’t just attacking gun owners, it is attacking the Constitution:
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January 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
That isn’t exactly news to readers of our site, but the NRA has released this effective ad on Obama’s hypocrisy when it comes to guns. His kids are amply protected by armed professionals. Are yours? Actually, a policeman stands guard at my youngest daughter’s high school every day. Many people seem to be unaware that this is commonplace in upscale schools, and lots of downscale schools, too, where they think
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January 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
That could be a long post! For now, let’s just note one aspect of the news media’s biased gun coverage: the media frequently paint the National Rifle Association as a sinister, shadowy organization that exercises a mysterious power over legislation. Thus this Yahoo News headline on a Christian Science Monitor article: This is silly. Obviously, Congress has the “muscle” to pass whatever it wants to, and neither “gun lobby”–either pro
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January 12, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this week Stewart Mills of Mills Fleet Farm released an open video letter to Minnesota Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan and Minnesota Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar regarding gun control legislation being touted in Congress. Originally posted here by the Brainerd (Minnesota) Dispatch, the video sets out to establish that a duck hunting shotgun is more destructive and lethal than a Huldra AR-15 modern sporting rifle. It does
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January 10, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you hate America and the West generally, but aren’t crazy enough to long for Nazism or Communism, what’s left? Remarkably, many leftists have recently been expressing affection for the Ottoman Empire. Seriously. If you think about it, the Ottomans fulfilled a liberal fantasy: authoritarian so you get to boss everyone around and always get your way, but usually without actually having to murder your enemies. Plus, with no shortage
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January 10, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Obama administration claimed that it would be listening to a wide variety of views in looking for solutions to mass shootings and other forms of violence. The administration invited the NRA to a meeting today with Joe Biden, Eric Holder and others. To the surprise of some–those who aren’t familiar with the NRA’s commitment to gun safety–the organization accepted the invitation. The meeting, however, did not go well. Following
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January 9, 2013 — John Hinderaker
One of the striking features of the current debate over gun control is how tired the liberals’ ideas are. Chief among their proposals is re-instituting the ban on “assault weapons.” But we’ve already tried that: a ban on “assault weapons”–a meaningless term that finds significance only in the arbitrary definitions of the defunct federal statute–was in effect for ten years, from 1994 to 2004, and no one claims that it
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