Image 01 Image 03

Dianne Feinstein creates a shopping list

Dianne Feinstein creates a shopping list

As we debate new gun legislation, shouldn’t we have facts not feelings drive the issue?

We’ve heard that mass shootings are on the increase, but they are not.

We’ve heard that school homicides and violence are on the rise, but they are not.

Dianne Feinstein plans to introduce a bill banning:

the sale, transfer, importation and manufacturing of more than 100 specifically-named firearms as well as certain semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds.

Those 100 specifically-named firearms will sell like hotcakes in the period leading up to the ban, with little evidence that the law will decrease actual deaths.  The bill also will “grandfather” another 900 specifically-named firearms.  We now have a shopping list 1000 weapons long.

If we are trying to save lives, don’t facts matter?

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

What truly amazes me is the level of Black on Black, Black on Brown, Brown on Black murder, shootings, rape and other crimes that plague cities. Many weapons in these cases are procured illegally and certainly without Congressional approval. However, it appears the Ruling Class wants to suppress the rights of law abiding citizens and not do anything about rampant crime in urban areas. Meanwhile, the various bodyguards of the Ruling Class, the Entertaining Class and other Elites get armed protection.

It would be hard to fashion a more perfect model of the failures of gun control than Newtown, Connecticut. One of the bluest of states, with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the US.

None of them availed to save one life. As elsewhere, the carnage stopped when people with guns arrived to stop it.

2nd Ammendment Mother | December 18, 2012 at 9:38 am

Make no mistake that pretty much every firearm on the market meets some part of these definitions, right down to my .22 target rifles.

Everything I own fits those definitions; I bet at least one of the guns I own is specifically named. Anyone know if the complete list is published anywhere?

Soledad O’Brien …. proof positive why CNN continues to be firmly entrenched in the cellar for news ratings.

So it begins. And don’t expect it to stop. Once the door is opened for such bans, it never closes. Expect an Obama EO soon as well. He will sign an EO banning certain guns and ammo and imposing new regulations (the backdoor to gun control) then dare the GOP to defy him given the emotional imperative he and the media are infusing and fortifying in the culture. The media will be absolutely united and ruthless. The GOP, needless to say, will cave.

This is how it’s done — textbook incremental tyranny.

As for “facts”, the whole point is establishing an “emotional imperative” to nullify them, even shame those who dare to raise them. This is no longer a culture or a nation interested in facts — only emotions and self-gratifying moral vanity. The Left has made sure of that. 50 years or so of promulgating Narratives and indoctrinating the young not only to ignore facts but to despise and slander as heartless those who argue with them.

This massacre was Obama’s Oklahoma City, and he’s going to ride it to total nullifcation of the 2nd Amendment.

    Ragspierre in reply to raven. | December 18, 2012 at 10:11 am

    You are quite mistaken about several of the things you say.

    Gun control was once much more threatening in America, and is not well supported now.

    If you need proof, you have only to look at how people are voting with their dollars.

      I don’t believe I am wrong.

      The fact Americans have opposed gun control in the past is immaterial. The Left is not intimidated or even influenced by precedent. It plays the long game. This is the secret of the Left’s strength — its audacity and stamina sustained by total conscience-less control of the cultural narrative. America’s predominant belief in the 2nd Amendment and its embrace of guns will have no bearing on the Left’s ceaseless and concerted push which will simply change the rules of the game and marginalize and finally corner and exhaust opposition both legally and morally. Besides, bans or excessive taxes on ammunition will effectively render weapons useless and the recreational culture of weapon practice a thing of the past.

      William Pitt said, “the welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.”

      No one on the political Right has the wits or guts either to understand this or to make the case and challenge the power grab being made on the pretext of social good. No one within the Right political sphere has the strength of conservative character, political savvy and stamina to take on Obama’s deep and instrinsic Leftism, which knew the potential beauty and power of such a crisis and had a plan already in place for it. Did we have a plan? Are you kidding? We still don’t.

      The Left and the media have totally mastered the black arts of public persuasion and how to exercise blunt emotional blackmail. They will make any conservative politician who stands against the coming wave of gun bans as an anti-social beast who exemplifies the extremist, heartless and even bloodthirsty Republican party. This crisis is a compound opportunity for Obama, the Left and the media.

      Has any basic conservative habit, impulse or caution in the American electorate stopped them one bit over the past four years?

        Ragspierre in reply to raven. | December 18, 2012 at 10:51 am

        I sometimes wonder how you make it through a day. Seriously.

        There is very little new under the Sun. This battle didn’t start with your conversion to conservative thinking, and other people are not idiots. The Sixties was a much more dangerous period for the Second Amendment.

        Your posts follow the same pattern; our side is stupid, feckless, and cowardly. This seems to have some popularity. Cynics are often considered amusing or cool. And there is always reason to be cynical. Always.

        But some of us have been fighting this long battle for a long time. We are not stupid. We have been effective. We know we will need to be today and tomorrow.

        Are Americans buying firearms? Yes, we are.

        Are gun control laws being rolled back? Yes, they are.

        Would a push to impose laws in this field be successful? Hard to predict with certainty, but I very much doubt it, and I MORE doubt they would be obeyed.

          “There is very little new under the Sun.”

          Yes and no. The urge to control by the would-be totalitarian is ageless and unchanged. However the means to achieve it within America are relatively new, and have been exercised in new and bold ways in the past 20 years (and in compressed and almost surreally audacious forms and methods in the past four). And this has taken place without any coherent or effective opposition from the establishment Right.

          Does the 2012 election now seem like a dream? Did it really happen? Did we really nominate somebody to challenge any of this? I wonder how much many of us really paid attention to the Romney non-candidacy, to its foreordained abjectness, to its dreary trajectory of failure, to its non-confrontation of this momentous and dedicated undoing of the American idea, and learned anything except what the Left hoped we would — that resistance is impossible and even suicidal.

          We need to take honest stock: The establishment republican “opposition party” apparatus — and we along with it — are currently being pummeled into non-existence. We’re participating in our own Bataan death march. There is NO ONE able or apparently willing to confront the central and surpassing threat to our understanding of America as a Republic. Not really, not in the sense that would matter to the beast of chaos the left and media has loosed on our society. As the threat is indeed something “new under the sun” in our public life, so too is the total absence of a challenge to it from the opposition political leadership. Indeed, it seems like a perverse coefficient. And you don’t think the Left, always the feral opportunist, doesn’t understand this?

          I reiterate: the Left and the media are forming a full-scale assault on gun rights and ownership in America. The term “2nd Amendment” will be scrupulously avoided in this campaign. But they will not rest until they have established the legislative and regulatory precedent and structure for its total nullification.

          Yes, we are in a new America. And it crept in under our noses. But it’s here. And all the Marco Rubios and Chris Christies and Jeb Bushes, or RNC fundraising, or Tea Parties, or even economic collapse, aren’t going to matter, or make a difference as to how power is now won and used in America. I’ve never said the battle is impossible; to the contrary. To engage and even win the battle is far easier than we realize. But it requires a new (for our time) consciousness, a new way to think and act in the public realm. In a limited way, Breitbart showed us or gave us a template. However it takes a mindset, a consciousness, that I’m afraid — no, I’m now convinced — simply isn’t available to or attainable by our current class of politicians. That is the source of my frustration and monotony.

          And by the way, no need to get personal. Or is there?

          Ragspierre in reply to Ragspierre. | December 18, 2012 at 2:01 pm

          There was nothing personal in anything I said.

          “…the Left and the media are forming a full-scale assault on gun rights and ownership in America.”

          Nonsense. They have been doing that for 100 years roughly.

          Do some research on the atmosphere following the Kennedy assassinations. Just hark back a few months to the Tucson shootings.

          Will the Collective seek to ghoulishly exploit the mass hysteria (and that is how I view it) around these shootings? Yeah. Duh. They ALWAYS do.

          Are they trying to find creative, extra-legal ways to get what they want? Yeah. Duh. They ALWAYS HAVE.

          Read up on Sen. Birch Bayh.

          I noted you didn’t respond to my questions.

          I’m sorry you can’t see the phenomenon of the present state of Leftism and how it is unlike anything in our history. The Kennedy years? Birch Bayh? Perhaps as Breitbart said, it is like one of those holograms of the Eiffel Tower within the image of the Empire State Building. You don’t see it until you see it, and then nothing is the same once you do.

          Certainly the Leftist threat took initial and shadowy shape in the 60s but its proud flowering today is like nothing in our history. As a former Letfist who grew up among them and saw them gnash their teeth in frustration for decades and now see them gloat at their power, I’m confident of my assessment.

          I have focused my anger and insults at the GOP powers that be.

          I’ve tried to maintain a politically-themed conversation. You question how I “get through the day, seriously.” This isn’t personal? I’m not offended, just noting.

          As I count, you posed three questions. These appeared to me rhetorical and self-indulgent, as you answered them as part of your argument. Was I expected to respond? All right. The facts that people are buying firearms and that gun control laws are in many cases being rolled back were beside my point as to what the Left has planned, and how little the Left cares about precedent or history. That was really my entire point: the future. That we’re facing an empowered and audacious Left beyond any known reference point.

          You ask, “would a push to impose laws in this field be successful?” To answer, yes, under the right circumstances of emotional cultural pressure driven by the media and given the current state of republican political nerve and the absence of anti-Leftist fighters in Washington, it is very possible. But I didn’t suggest only gun control laws were planned. I mentioned ammunition restrictions and taxes. I also mentioned extra-legislative actions, like EOs. I predict both. I also predict laws. More importantly, I predict a Narrative-building effort intended to marginalize gun ownership and use. As mentioned, it’s a long game. It doesn’t involve brownshirts coming to confiscate guns or processes to repeal the 2nd Amendment. It involves the same sort of propagandistic siege we’ve seen against traditional religion. Always look to what the Left wants badly, and the Left badly wants the end of gun rights. Who could have guessed that during a period of economic crisis the democrats would be able to pass a national healthcare bill? They wanted it for decades, but they got it now. Who would guess that during a gun rights boon, the Left would be able to wage a war on gun rights?

          Ragspierre in reply to Ragspierre. | December 18, 2012 at 3:43 pm

          “I sometimes wonder how you make it through a day. Seriously.”

          There is no question there, just a statement. I do wonder, because I could not be as unrelentingly negative and pessimistic as you seem to be and still function. If that is personal, it is more about me than you.

          Again, there is nothing here I have not seen many, many times before, though we are afflicted with the worst outlaw bunch in several decades.

          You should look into the Wilson years if you think this is unprecedented. They were actually in many ways worse.

          ObamaCare, as I’ve said, is a game-changer, and I do wonder how in the world we will get past it.

          But gun control will be as effective and as practical as Prohibition, and as ignored.

    Bruno Lesky in reply to raven. | December 18, 2012 at 10:27 am

    Add to no facts inability to use facts, as in —
    no critical thinking
    no reasoning
    no consideration of actual consequence
    no responsibility for negative consequence of action.

    When you mention Obama’s EO, I thought maybe some worthy individual/group with standing would mount a challenge on the basis of the constitutionality of the executive order per se.

    In the meantime, I’m hoping for the sustained good health of Thomas, Scalia and Alioto, particularly for the next 4 years. My desperation is showing when I add Kennedy and Roberts to that list.

Of course the facts matter, and maybe Sen. Feinstein should consult with people who have relevant experience. She can find some of them in her own, home state.

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2012/12/gun-control-vs-teh-crazy.html#comment-6a00d8341bfadb53ef017ee660f43a970d

Don’t stop with the article, see the long comments from people with other, highly relevant experience.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/spitzer/2012/12/17/newtown_shooting_it_s_time_to_target_cerberus_the_private_equity_firm_that.html

Moral paragon Eliot Spitzer is doing what Collectivists do…attacking capitalism.

Today would be a good day to buy stock in American small arms makers…and if you can find them in stock, a gun or two.

Umm, could use some assistance, what does this acronym stand for ACLU? I ask because they do not have A-clu..


Madness, Deinstitutionalization & Murder

No facts do not matter. Only feel good legislation makes the holiday bright for liberals like Dianne “Donner” Feinstein, and Dick “Blitzen” Durbin

Senators, if you want to help reduce violence in our society then rein in the entertainment industry and not the mass population – take away Hollywood’s bullets – its receipts from all of its gun toting movies, videos, video games, TV cable series, Rap music, etc.

Disconnect your cable TV and your money from the cable supplier – the gun runners. Really.

Obama paraded Osama’s body around with him on the campaign trail, as he watched our ambassador die, denying al Qaeda still thrived.

Now guns must be confiscated, and the dead children will be held up as another “human shield” of emotion, denying that the “gun free zone” policy of the left killed these kids. He blamed freedom of speech before (that video), and now is attacking another essential American right. The real cause was the restriction of that right.

But media won’t place any blame on the self righteous fascists that create gun free zones. Leaving a building of children defenseless against an armed kid, they consider to be courageous policy (as long as they have armed protection).

The very obvious and direct breakdown, that would almost certainly have saved the kids, is one or two adults in the building with a weapon. But common sense is verboten. http://5440fight.com/2012/12/17/the-actions-of-nick-meli-helped-end-the-oregon-mall-shooting/

The narrative is set, and even FOX seems largely to be surrendering to “compromise”. Republicans better slow walk this till emotion subsides, like Obama does with Benghazi or Fast and Furious. (and gawd, Soledad gets shot down with logic, but keeps her leftist chant going … “never break rank”)

Someone should be laying the blame for all these lives directly on policy that removed guns from responsible adults, leaving these children to die. Draconian gun laws will only make things worse for everyone, and embolden government to be more invasive in our lives.

Gun Free Zones Killed These Kids.
Say it loud. Say it proud.

It’s all about the narrative now.

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | December 18, 2012 at 11:02 am

One reason why I have a visceral hatred for today’s Democrat Party is they never know when to stop. Once the camel’s nose gets under the tent, they keep pushing. Whatever the issue. Just look at two issues in the forefront today, gun control and taxes.

If they re-institute an “assault rifle” ban, and another mass shooting occurs using a different type of weapon, they will be emboldened to then go after whatever weapon is used.
We had an “assault rifle” ban for a decade, from 1994-2004. Experts say the ban had a non-consequential effect on mass shootings and violent crime. In fact, violent crime went down. That ban lapsed. Now less than 10 years later the petty tyrants in the Democrat Party want to re-instate it again. They would outlaw squirt guns if some far left Ivy League PhD sociologist conducted a biased study filled with psychobabble portending to show that kids who play with squirt guns are more likely to be violent adults. I’m not joking. That’s how controlling and disdainful of individual liberty these creeps.

Now look at taxes. If they successfully pass a tax increase on “the wealthy”, I am fairly confident they will be emboldened and want to pass tax hikes on the “upper middle class” next.

Whether they are content with punishing only the wealthy or they move down a wrung on the socio-economic ladder and come after the upper middle class next, I will bet a cupcake that whatever tax increases go into effect will be permanent unless Republicans simultaneously get control of the House, Presidency, and a veto proof Senate.

We had high (or higher) tax rates under Clinton. Republicans wanted EVERYONE to keep more of their own hard earned money so they lowered them. Now Democrats are intent on raising them back.

The common thread between assault rifles and taxes is that when Democrat polices get reversed and a tiny bit of liberty is restored to the people, the reversal is only temporary.

Anybody who thinks Russ Feingold did not mean it when he said at the Madison protests that, “it’s not over until we win” is delusional.

GFZ = Gun Free Zone
TRE = Target Rich Environment

GFZ = TRE

Whether or not mass shootings are on the increase is apparently debateable. In an op-ed piece today’s Wall Street Journal, David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute, writes:

“Alan Lankford of the University of Alabama analyzed data from a recent New York Police Department study of “active shooters”—criminals who attempted to murder people in a confined area, where there are lots of people, and who chose at least some victims randomly. Counting only the incidents with at least two casualties, there were 179 such crimes between 1966 and 2010. In the 1980s, there were 18. In the 1990s, there were 54. In the 2000s, there were 87.

If you count only such crimes in which five or more victims were killed, there were six in the 1980s and 19 in the 2000s.”

He notes that gun ownership is far more regulated today than it was such incidents were relatively rare. He speculates that media coverage of violent incidents and de-institutionalization of the mentally ill may be responsible for the increase. He concludes:

“People who are serious about preventing the next Newtown should embrace much greater funding for mental health, strong laws for civil commitment of the violently mentally ill—and stop kidding themselves that pretend gun-free zones will stop killers.”

    Ragspierre in reply to PlainTalk. | December 18, 2012 at 11:37 am

    I suggest another factor…

    obsessive and compulsive media coverage, assuring notoriety to the broken minds who do this kind of thing. That certainly seems to play a role in what they do.

    Maybe we should consider press control…??? I mean, if we’re screwing about with the Bill Of Rights, we know gun control has never worked; maybe we should restrict news coverage. (And, no, I am not serious…but I think as consumers, we should shut it off.)

Vox Day has been addressing the meta-argument that we must fight: “The dialectic cannot reach the rhetorically-minded.”

He more fully fleshes out what we need to start doing here

We must not fight on their turf, we must fight using their techniques on what Vox terms the ‘rhetorically dynamic’ people.

Echoes of this line of thinking are in Instapundit’s recent call for wealthy conservatives to start buying womens’ magazines.

As foreign as it is for us event think of it, we are going to have to learn how to go on ‘The View’ and beat Whoppie Goldberg using non-dialectical means. ‘The horror, the horror’, I know.

This is what passes for lib-fascist courage. Instead of confronting the issue they confront inanimate objects. They are incapable of making difficult choices and they are incapable of living in a free society. Staring into the mirror requires courage those fools have never had and they never will.

We’ve heard that mass shootings are on the increase, but they are not.

The US population is more than three times what it was 100 years ago. Couldn’t you expect three times as many mass shootings?

Of course facts don’t matter. That’s why we have proposals to decrease our liberty while around one million aliens illegally enter this nation every year. We have proposals to increase funding for education while the product of the system is progressively poor (correlation or causation?). We have health care reform which neither addresses causes of expensive medical services and pharmaceuticals nor their finite availability. We have energy and foreign policies which require a global military presence. We have “green” solutions which displace people (and animals) on a large scale, while causing damage to the environment during both the development and operational phases. We are participating and causing unprovoked regime change to install imperial interests. We are arming drug cartels and terrorists. We are running trillion dollar account deficits, which devalue both capital and labor. We have demands to mitigate the death of several thousand people annually while we enthusiastically support the abortion of one million people who literally have no voice or means to protest their murder, and no right or avenue to due process.

Perhaps we are insane. Well, at least a large minority, and perhaps a slight majority.

Frankly, we’d all be better off if Diane Feinstein concentrated on her duties as chair of the senate intelligence committee instead of chasing every passing bandwagon. Benghazi? Our crooked, dishonest state department? The CIA? Yesterday’s bandwagons.

    Fast and Furious? How many were killed with Obama and Holder’s guns?

    The more I think about this, the more I see the democrat’s and socialist’s grand plan. Use the courts to sue to have the mentally unbalanced relesaed back into society so there will be violence against innocents. Then pass laws banning guns. Count the drug dealers as a part of the “children” being killed to make it more of an “emergency. Then when the economy collapses, we will not be able to defend against the government confiscating the rest of our money and assets.

Hitler’s playbook, folks

“…New research into Adolf Hitler’s use of firearms registration lists to confiscate guns and the execution of their owners teaches a forceful lesson — one that reveals why the American people and Congress have rejected registering honest firearm owners…
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)–the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany’s Jews–took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On Nov. 8, the New York Times reported from Berlin, “Berlin Police Head Announces ‘Disarming’ of Jews,” explaining:

The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been “disarmed” with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.1…
Individual criminals wreak their carnage on individuals or small numbers of people. As this century has shown, terrorist governments have the capacity to commit genocide against millions of people, provided that the people are unarmed. Schemes to confiscate firearms kept by peaceable citizens have historically been associated with some of the world’s most insidious tyrannies. Given this reality, it is not surprising that law-abiding gun owners oppose being objects of registration….”
http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/registration_article/registration.html
The European Jews were disarmed before the Holocaust that enabled it to happen. Treblinka was the only Nazi death camp of Jews that resisted but they had no guns.
History tends to repeat itself. Be aware.

If only the good Senator would apply as much energy to the gun running Fast and Furious DOJ or the Benghazi murders and the gun deals in the Middle East….

“and semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds”

Under this definition, we would be banning the venerable, 52 year old Marlin Model 60 in 22 rimfire, because it holds 14 rounds:

http://www.marlinfirearms.com/firearms/selfloading/60.asp

Look at it and tell me this is an “assault rifle”.

[…] and wrong. At the same time, it becomes increasingly clear that progressives, who think that government control is the solution to every problem, are using this tragedy to chip away at the 2nd Amendment which they have long […]

Let’s use the Canadian terminology here. She proposes to create 100 prohibited firearms and 900 grandfathered prohibited firearms. And they got right on board with the high capacity magazine ban. Predictable. Ineffective. And it will drive even more firearms of the type they want to ban into civilian hands. Nice! It’d be bad if there weren’t a steady supply of overpriced prohibited weapons and mags on the black market later on. Don’t neglect to stock up on ammo. Restrictions on that are sure to come too.

My advice based on the Canadian experience in the 1980’s and 1990’s is this. Standardize calibers. Buy at least one junk firearm in each of the major calibers to register so you can be ready to be sacrifice it later on. But in the interim, you can still use the junk guns to buy ammo legally. It’s not like the stuff goes bad quickly. Lay in all the hi-cap mags you can now. Same with reloading gear.

Start buying as many firearms that you want to keep long-term via private sales to break the paper trail of instant background check (being mindful of the relevant laws). Data mining of instant background check data is sure to be on the agenda at some point. Hence the mania on the left about ‘closing the gun show loophole’. It’s so their background check database can get turned into a registration/confiscation database when the time is right. Until then (i.e. the next massacre) they want to make sure that that the ownership data doesn’t get corrupted. Look at the Province of Quebec. Even though the Federal Government got rid of the long gun registry in Canada after more than a decade and billions of dollars of pure waste, the Province of Quebec still wanted the data so they could retain the option of long gun confiscation in their Province.

Long post – but the Democrat’s game plan is clear. Look North to what they *really* have in mind.