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Quote of the Day – Sultan Knish Edition

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This is a long one:

The gun control debate, like all debates with the left, is reducible to the question of whether we are individuals who make our own decisions or a great squishy social mass that helplessly responds to stimuli. Do people kill with guns or does the availability of guns kill people? Do bad eating habits kill people or does the availability of junk food kill people?

To the left these are distinctions without a difference. If a thing is available then it is the cause of the problem. The individual cannot be held accountable for shooting someone if there are guns for sale. Individuals have no role to play because they are not moral actors, only members of a mob responding to stimuli.

You wouldn’t blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been “liberated” to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it’s because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it’s because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem.

(My emphasis.)  Read the rest, Gun Control, Thought Control and People Control.

Then read (if you haven’t) That Sumbitch Ain’t Been BORN!

A Capella

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnt7euRF5Pg?rel=0]

Journey of Faith performed a Christmas “Flash Mob” at the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach on December 18, much to the delight of local shoppers.

Merry Christmas to all my readers, from your friendly gun-blogging atheist. And a happy New Year, too.  (I’m glad the Mayans were wrong.)

Gun Control News in Other Nations… (UPDATE)

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We have the story of former Marine Jon Hammar who is currently rotting in a Mexican prison for, well, I’m not quite sure:

Nightmare in Mexico: Friends, family call for the release of ex-Marine jailed in Mexico after trying to declare an antique shotgun

Jon Hammar was en route to Costa Rica for a surfing trip when he cleared the gun with U.S. customs and was told he could do the same in Mexico. Four months later, he’s still behind bars in a notorious prison and is ‘losing hope.’

An ex-Marine who survived dangerous patrols in Iraq and Afghanistan is now “chained to a bed” in a notorious Mexican prison after a road trip to Costa Rica went terribly wrong, his friends and family say.

A chorus of supporters are calling on the Mexican government to release Jon Hammar, 27, who was jailed in August for carrying an antique shotgun that he believed could be legally registered in Mexico.

Hammar, of Palmetto Bay, Fla., was headed to Costa Rica for a surfing trip to try and recover from post-traumatic stress after four years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The only time Hammar is not losing his mind is when he’s on the water,” fellow Marine veteran Ian McDonough, who was arrested with Hammar during the August incident but later released by Mexican authorities, told McClatchy newspapers.

Hammar and McDonough had stocked up a used Winnebago with surfboards and camping supplies and had just crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas into Matamoros, Mexico, where they were detained.

Hammar had registered the shotgun, a Sear & Roebuck model that once belonged to his great-grandfather, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on the U.S. side of the border.

After being told by U.S. agents the shotgun posed no problem and could be reigstered in Mexico, Hammar and McDonough crossed the border, tried to declare the weapon, and found themselves separated and behind bars.

“The crux of it is the length of the barrel,” his mother, Olivia Hammar, 46, told Reuters. “There’s an old law on the books that says it can’t be under 25 inches…It’s a 2-foot barrel…It’s strictly a technicality.”

“It’s a glorified BB gun,” she said.

McDonough, who has Argentine residency in addition to his U.S. citizenship, was freed a few days after the Aug. 13 arrest and walked back to Brownsville.

But the nightmare was just beginning for Hammar, who on Aug. 20 was charged with carrying a deadly weapon and placed in a prison known as CEDES in Matamoros, a notorious facility heavily populated, and run, by Mexico’s dangerous drug cartels.

His parents have even received late night phone calls saying he would be killed if they failed to make thousands of dollars in payments into a Western Union account.

“He was housed in a wing controlled by the drug cartel,” said Eddie Varon-Levy, a Mexican lawyer hired by the family. He told Reuters the charges in Mexico appear to be an effort to “make an example out of the gringo.”

Read the whole thing.

This is what happens when you don’t grok that Mexico doesn’t allow its law-abiding citizens access too much firepower, and certainly makes it difficult for foreigners to bring in firearms.

In better times the U.S. government would simply inform the Mexican government that unless this Marine was released and returned to the States, a Marine detachment would be dispatched to bring him back, and that detachment would have artillery and close-air support.

UPDATE: It’s not a Marine Expeditionary Force, but you can sign a petition urging Jon Hammar’s release.

UPDATE: 12/21/12 – Hammar is being released.

Local Gunshop Update

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From my friend at my favorite gun shop, an update:

If you are interested, here is the current “state” of things at the shop:

We have ONE AR platform left.

We have ONE M-1A platform left

We have a handful of AK platforms left

We have NO high-cap mags for ARs or AKs left

We have a handful of 20-round M-1A mags left

We are almost out of Glocks

We are almost out of Glock mags

We are OUT of .380 ammo

We are almost out of 9mm ammo

We are still good on .223 and 7.62X39 ammo

We are running low on Ruger 10/22s

There is a faint hope that we MIGHT see one or two ARs “sometime after the first of the year”. Same with mags, parts kits, etc.

And this is hardly an exception. Tam links to this report at The Firearm Blog, with photographic evidence.

Truck Update

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Despite the fact that this is a gun blog, and we’re in BOHICA mode once again, I wanted to follow up on my truck situation. As previously reported, I returned the Tonka truck to the dealership, and they have it up for sale again after repairing the problems I returned it for.

I have replaced it with a 2002 F250 I purchased from a different dealership because, well, they had it and at a price I was willing to pay.

I would have been more than willing to buy from the previous dealership again.  They specialize in trucks, and 4×4 diesels in particular, but they run across some interesting stuff.  They buy primarily vehicles that were stolen and recovered, then auctioned by the insurance company that paid off on the theft.  Interesting business model.  I have no qualms about recommending them: Wheel Kinetics.

If you’re interested in the now-repaired Nuclear Banana, here it is. Watch the video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWyqiuTV1YI?rel=0]
Good guys. It was a nice truck, but I don’t think they’ll sell it this time for what I paid for it.  New EGR, new water pump, two more new injectors and a reprogrammed fuel injection control module.  That could not have been cheap, and I wasn’t going to put the $$ into it.  They have.

From the Front Lines

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U.S. Citizen reported on Monday:

Firearms and Ammunition inventory levels continued their plunge at Nationwide Distributors which serve firearms dealers.

Ammunition broke the 50% level (less than half of pre-election day stock on hand remains).

One order for Magpul PMags was cancelled today at Traction Control.

At 5:30 AM I showed 9,330 units on hand, when the order was received (at 5:00 PM) the quantity available was zero. My distributor reported over 70,000 Magpul PMags were sold last weekend alone.

(My emphasis.)  My local favorite firearms vendor Dave reported this to me via email last night:

“Submitted for your approval”:

a) We sold more AR-platform rifles TODAY than we have in the past two months

b) We can’t replace the ARs that we have sold, because ALL of our distributors are sold out.

c) None of our distributors have any idea when they will see more.

d) Last week we received a shipment of over one hundred Mag-Pul 30-round P- mags and were worried about having them around through year-end inventory. As of today, we’re worried about finding more.

e) We are selling multiple cases worth of 9mm ball ammo every day. These are not being sold by the case, they are being sold as individual, 50-round boxes. (I bought two boxes myself today. I really have to sit down and do some handloading for 9mm. I have all the components. – Ed.)

f) I put out three to four Mosin Nagant M-91/30 rifles EVERY morning.

g) I put out two to three home defense shotguns EVERY morning.

h) ATF form 4473 (the “yellow form”) comes to us in case lots. The forms are shrink-wrapped 100 to a stack. Six stacks to a case. We have gone through three stacks since this past Friday. (This also counts forms that have to be destroyed due to mistakes, forms that are in a “delayed” status and forms that are in a “denied” status as well as forms that are not immediately processed for sundry other reasons).

i) We are totally sold out of AR lowers (in all manifestations), parts kits, and most other AR-related goodies.

j) The FBI maintains three call centers to process NICS checks. We have the 800 number on speed dial. The last two days I have had to keep pushing the “redial” button because of the “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy at this time. Please call back later.” message I hear when I try to call in for a background check. Average number of times I have to hit the redial button: fourteen. Conversely, once I actually do get through, the wait time to talk to a human, is seven to nine minutes. If the form I am calling in gets sent for “further review” it’s another five-plus minutes before I get to talk to the next human.

Markadelphia suggested in a comment yesterday that “People are really sick of it and there may very well be waning interest in guns.” Doesn’t appear that way, does it?  Standard response #7.

Quote of the Day – Geekwitha.45 Edition

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Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Barack Obama, 12/16/2012

There was a time when an American leader that suggested that freedom was the root cause of evil committed against innocent children would have booed off the stage, and possibly ridden out of town on a rail.

You know, there are very constructive things that could be done, that meaningfully address the issues and are consistent with a society that is both formidably armed and free, which is what I would expect of a true leader.

But we all know that’s not where he’s going with this. He’s going to do something else, driven primarily by ideological agenda, because this crisis presents far too good an opportunity to waste.

Obama hears the blood lust of his increasingly grief unhinged base screaming for the heads of the NRA and their members, and senses his time has come, which for a man of hubris like him it is a time of great peril with respect to his decisions. Pride goeth before a fall, and pride is never more manifest than in a man who deems himself imbued with epic destiny having arrived at his moment in history.

Have no doubt: Had Lanza driven his mother’s stolen car in bloody zig zags through the school yard, no one would be screaming for the head of the chairman of the AAA, no one would be accosting car owners at lunch or on their facebook walls demanding that they justify their car ownership in the face such tragedy.

$DEITY bless this wretched nation, for it stands with thunderous applause at the precipice of a monumental stupidity.

A comment from yesterday.

And now, Judge Alex Kozinski:

The majority falls prey to the delusion — popular in some circles – that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth – born of experience – is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

—

All too many of the other great tragedies of history – Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few – were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.