Tag: gun control

Women Shouldn’t Have Guns . . .

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Women Shouldn’t Have Guns . . .

. . . for self-defense. Assailants will take them away and they’ll be shot with their own guns!

At least, that’s what I’ve heard from about the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

Apparently nobody told this woman:

“A seventy year old Indiana woman stops an intruder in his tracks and 911 tapes just released prove she was not going to back down.”

“The woman held a suspect at gunpoint until police arrived.”

But remember: this apparently doesn’t qualify as a “defensive gun use,” since nobody died. That seems to be the criteria used by anti-gun forces. It’s only a DGU if a perp (often referred to as “the victim”) assumes room temperature.

Anybody have more detailed information on this one?

Another Debate Invitation

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Seems like a good way to start the year off.

Breda‘s husband Mike wrote a rather scathing piece in response to an op-ed in the Detroit News blogs (so I didn’t have to). From that same source, one Libby Spencer wrote to defend the author of the piece against the verbal abuse strongly-worded missives hurled at him by us, the “vicious mindless mob” of gun owners who responded. (h/t to The Pistolero for the pointer.) So I dropped a comment of my own there. We’ll see if this goes anywhere.

Ms. Spencer, you make a good point about the (relatively small) percentage of gun owners who are abusive when responding to people such as yourself. I have said, on numerous occasions, that we are often our own worst enemy when it comes to public perception.

But I’d like to make some comments about this subject. Gun owners are, as Dr. Michael S. Brown once stated, the victims of a decades-long slow-motion hate crime. It is we who are routinely blamed for the deaths of others because the weapon used was a firearm. It is we who are demonized for being members of a culture that was once admired in this country. A lot of us are tired of it. A few of us are more than tired.

You characterized what I like to refer to as “The Great Zumbo Incident of 2007” as the act of a “mindless vicious mob.” So sorry, but no, it wasn’t. That was the impression the media sold – about a week and a half after the fact – but I was there from about the Saturday after Jim Zumbo (in the words of one blogger) “apparently tired of his 42-year career put his word processor in his mouth and pulled the trigger.” That same blogger also said this (and no, it wasn’t me): “Ten years ago, had his statement survived the editorial process and made it into print, we would have seen a handful of cherry-picked letters on the ‘Letters to the Editor’ page of Outdoor life, and things would have pretty much proceeded along at status quo ante. Not now. Not today.” Zumbo called the AR-15 rifle – one of THE most popular target and hunting platforms in existence – a “terrorist rifle” and advocated that they be banned from hunting.

He did so out of ignorance. The literally MILLIONS of us who own them were, understandably, angry. And we spoke up. Some, of course, excessively. Most, however, were not. And Zumbo’s sponsors (one of which was Remington, a company about to begin selling hunting versions of the AR-15) dropped him like a hot rock.

Welcome to the Internet age, where feedback is now instantaneous. Now when people such as yourself spout idiocy out of A) ignorance, or B) malice [or C) all of the above), there’s feedback.

I’m a fan of “reasoned discourse” myself, but I understand the anger and frustration of other gun owners who see what gets published as “fact” in today’s media and who KNOW that it is at best misconception, or at worst deliberate lies.

We’re tired of it. I’m tired of it. It’s why I became an advocate.

Here’s an offer: I invite you to debate the topic of “assault weapons.” The choice of forum is yours, but anything I write I will publish – in full – at my blog. I promise to be civil, to cite fact, and to provide references for you to verify. I don’t expect to change your mind, but I do think you’ll be surprised by what you learn.

If you don’t have access to my email address from this comment, do a Google search on “The Smallest Minority.” That’s my blog, and my contact information is on the left sidebar.

I’d make the same offer to Rev. Smith, but I doubt he’d accept. Besides, he wants to ban everything. You just don’t like “assault weapons.”

Think they’ll publish it?

UPDATE: That was quick. Now the question is, will she respond?

UPDATE II: Well, it’s a response:

Thu. 01/1/09 03:32 PM
Hey Kbaker. I believe we had that conversation on my personal blog back when the Zumbo thing went down. As I recall you were one of the few who were at all civil about it at that time. I still think that was completely unfair to him for the reasons I gave at the time.

I’m not at all equipped to debate the subject. I’m clueless on guns. All I can do is tell you how it’s playing among my fellow clueless citizens. Again, I’m on your side. The last thing I want to see is our citizens disarmed.

My reply:

Ms. Spencer, you state “I’m not at all equipped to debate the subject. I’m clueless on guns. All I can do is tell you how it’s playing among my fellow clueless citizens. Again, I’m on your side. The last thing I want to see is our citizens disarmed.”

The problem is, as most of us see it, is that those of us who ARE “equipped to debate the subject” are ignored. The level of vitriol you object to is one result of that. It seems, on many levels, that such language is the only thing that gets anyone’s attention any more.

Unfortunately, it’s gotten even worse, as many of us in the gunblogosphere have been discussing in recent months.

If you’d care to discuss THAT, I’m game. Because if people like you – people who don’t want to see the citizenry disarmed, but are unable to defend their position logically, factually, and (yes) aggressively – don’t do something to stand up to those who DO want to see us disarmed, then by all appearances harsh language may become the least of (y)our worries.

We’ll see where that leads . . .

Oh, and the post she referenced was, I think, this one: Boys and their toys – gun owners gone wild. Libby came into the subject only after the WaPo wrote an article on it. I’d forgotten, but I’ve debated Libby before on the Zumbo topic. Go here and read the comment thread, if you’re interested.

Nothing much has changed.

Too Tired to Post, But Can’t Pass This One Up

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Too Tired to Post, But Can’t Pass This One Up

I’ve got a childish sh!$storm in my comment threads, Rod Blagojevich gets arrested on corruption charges, and David brings us good news on how civil disobedience in California has brought change in that state, and looks likely to do it again.

Quote of the Day:

As I pointed out at Kevin Baker’s place, citing Jeff Cooper, IMO the supposed 3% is probably more like 0.03%, or an upper limit of 26,000 individuals across the US who are prepared to violently resist. In California, we didn’t see one such person. But with a few individuals laying the groundwork, you did see hundreds of thousands — maybe 2-3% of the entire state population — willing to risk an awful lot for less-than-violent action. And it worked!

I feel much better now.

Fantasy Ideology

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In August of 2002 Lee Harris published Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology, an essay exploring the “root cause” of the 9/11 attacks. It made a fairly big splash in the blogosphere. Here, for the purposes of this essay, are the key graphs from Harris’s piece:

My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late 1960s. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of antiwar protest. To me the point of such protest was simple–to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason–because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy–a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent antiwar demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view–for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

It was not your garden-variety fantasy of life as a sexual athlete or a racecar driver, but in it, he nonetheless made himself out as a hero–a hero of the revolutionary struggle. The components of his fantasy–and that of many young intellectuals at that time–were compounded purely of ideological ingredients, smatterings of Marx and Mao, a little Fanon and perhaps a dash of Herbert Marcuse.

For want of a better term, call the phenomenon in question a fantasy ideology–by which I mean political and ideological symbols and tropes used not for political purposes, but entirely for the benefit of furthering a specific personal or collective fantasy. It is, to be frank, something like the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons carried out not with the trappings of medieval romances–old castles and maidens in distress–but entirely in terms of ideological symbols and emblems. The difference between them is that one is an innocent pastime while the other has proved to be one of the most terrible scourges to afflict the human race.

There seems to be a lot of something much like that going around these days.

The topic of the “Three Percenters” has floated to the surface again. See here, here, here, and here. My previous posts on the subject are The Threshold of Outrage, Freedom, Hope, Outrage, Bright Lines, Revolutions and End Times, and Philosophy, Revolution, and the Restoration of the Constitution. And yes, the pieces are as long as the titles would suggest. You really need to read these links if (somehow) you’re unfamiliar with the background of this topic.

SayUncle states:

I would try to engage them and point out that maybe scaring the white people isn’t the best policy decision. That their efforts are better spent being politically active instead of engaging in mental masturbation all over their keyboards. Or, as Sebastian said: If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force. But, like reasoning with the birds, it’s a fruitless endeavor. It will waste my time and probably annoy the birds. After all, these are guys who accuse other bloggers of cowardice for not drawing a clear line in the sand, while pointing out their own lines have been crossed while they do nothing but engage in a New World Order induced circle jerk.

Linoge says:

After wasting considerable amounts of time reading their writings, the only conclusion I can come to is that they do not give to farts about America’s liberties and freedom – they only care about their own liberties and freedoms, and whatever perceived slights or affronts to them they see the government doing. They do not care that their writings (such as the letter to the editor) have almost undoubtedly done more harm than good by alienating readers. They do not care that there are political and social means and methods for airing their grievances, making changes in the governmental system, and making headway in terms of liberties and rights… and doing it all peaceably and without fomenting armed rebellion. They do not care that their proposed, poorly-thought-out actions have no clear-cut termination or resolution. They do not care that those actions would result in the deaths of many, many innocent people – people who had no interest in the situation, people whose choices were made for them by a merry band of “three percenter” misfits, people who might have supported them politically. They do not care that they do not have public support now, and they sure as hell would not have public support were they to follow through on their threats. They do not care that public support is the only way to make permanent, lasting changes in the American governmental system. They do not care that they appear to have absolultely no plans concerning what to do with the smoldering and shattered remains of the country after their glorious revolution (which indicates an admission of having no hope of success). They obviously do not care about standing up and fulfilling their useless promises in the past, when Americans’ Second-Amendment-protected rights were being “further restricted” (much less other rights going out the window). They do not care about all this, and more.

They don’t care, because they’re taken with a fantasy–a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. They want to take part in order to confirm their ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling themselves among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability.

The fact that it won’t accomplish their stated goals – is antithetical to them, in fact – is irrelevant.

Fits pretty good, doesn’t it?

Several people have quoted Sebastian on the topic, Uncle did so in the excerpt above. Let me repeat it:

If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force. There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.

I want to bring up Billy Beck again:

You know you’re talking about Carl Drega, right?

Every now and then, I see someone going on about “totalitarianism”. The misgrapplings surrounding this subject are rife. All the classic literature has gone far to foster them. (Arendt did damned fine work on it, but…) It just about never occurs to anyone that the root of that word can descend on any given individual, to the effect that “political scientists” always project over the whole culture, but without destroying the whole culture.

The destruction of Carl Drega was, nonetheless, “total”, and it was only the logical end of the very first claim that the state ever laid on his life. After that, it was all only degrees of application until the end.

And what difference did it make?

I’ve been so near the end of my goddamned rope that, for years now, I’ve harbored a half-baked plan to set myself on fire on the steps of the Capitol. Go ahead and make fun of it. Am I any more far-gone than the rest of you? What difference would it make if I was? Here is the central problem surrounding what you people are talking about:

There is no coherent and cohesive philosophy underpinning it. Everybody’s pissed off, but you all have your varying degrees of what you’ll settle for. Someone like me comes along to suggest something like starving the Beast out of existence by not paying for it, or withdrawing the overt political sanction by not bloody voting — like I’ve been doing for years to general laughter — and, suddenly, nobody is so pissed off anymore. There is something everyone can agree on: “Beck’s a kook.”

Beck concludes (read the whole piece, it’s worth your time):

But you people are talking about blowing the place up, whether you know it or not. That’s the only way it can go, as things are now, because there is no philosophy at the bottom of what you’re talking about. Once the shooting starts, all bets are off.

I’m pretty damned sure I’d rather not live to see that.

Realistically, neither would I. I’m not wrapped up in a fantasy ideology. Oh, I have my own personal line in the sand – my doorstep – but I don’t believe that 3% of the gun owning population will rise up against the eeeevil Feds when the next Assault Weapons Ban is passed. Or the next Wayne Fincher gets arrested.

Are you familiar with the “Free Wayne Webring”? Members of this webring want to bring attention to the case of Hollis Wayne Fincher, a man who put his ass on the line for what he believed. Mr. Fincher now, I believe, 61 years of age decided that being a citizen of the U.S., and the Second Amendment to the Constitution meant that he should be able to possess fully-automatic weapons and a short-barrelled shotgun without having to jump through the hoops of the 1934 National Firearms Act. Mr. Fincher was a founder of the Militia of Washington County, Arkansas. He quite openly built up some Sten submachine guns and some Browning 1919 light machine guns and, as Syd at Front Sight, Press put it, “formally notified the governor of Arkansas what he was doing.”

The BATF was not amused. Hollis Wayne Fincher was arrested for possession of post-’86 unregistered machine guns and an unregistered short-barrelled shotgun and was convicted in January of 2007, Second Amendment be damned. As I noted at the time, the verdict was completely unsurprising. Mr. Fincher made his argument in the 8th Circuit where there was already precedent on a similar case, U.S. v. Nelsen. Remember, this was long before D.C. v. Heller. So Mr. Fincher was convicted and sentenced to 6½ years. And, of course, the revocation of his right to arms forever.

This, of course, pissed off the gun nuts, and most especially the “Three-Percenters.”

But nobody shot a Fed. After all, their doorway wasn’t crossed.

Sebastian says that if he could get 3% of gun owners to become politically active – do the dull, grinding, irritating, necessary work involved in living in a Representative Democracy, then the possibility of this kind of thing ever occurring again would be nil.

OK, say you’re just not into envelope-stuffing, knocking on doors, writing letters to your Congresscritters, writing letters to the Editor of the local birdcage liners, calling your local TV and radio stations, showing up at the local office of your Representative or Senator and asking questions (or volunteering to help their campaign – if they’re on our side – or volunteering to help their opponent, if they’re not) or even running for office yourself as Clayton Cramer recently did.

Change the paradigm.

We don’t need a Free Wayne Webring, we need a JOIN Wayne Webring. Civil disobedience worked for Gandhi. It worked for Black civil rights.

I’ll be right up front with you: I’m not volunteering, I’m just proposing the idea.

Hey, if 3% of the gun-owning population is willing to saddle-up and go kill (as Mike Vanderboegh puts it) “the bureaucrats and politicians who decided to start the war? And, like Clinton, should we target the media talking heads and newspaper editors who clamored for it in the first place?” wouldn’t those same people be willing to clog the courts and even further overstuff our prison systems in the name of peaceful change?

I suspect not. After all, the point isn’t to actually alter the minds of other people or persuade them to act differently. The whole point is what the fantasy ideology does for the three-percenters.

I now expect a comment sh!#storm of my very own.

UPDATE 12/7: Will Brown comments cogently. I’ll have more to say about that post, if I have any energy left after work tomorrow.

Give ‘Em Hell!

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Give ‘Em Hell!

Ride Fast and Shoot Straight does a damned fine job fisking the clueless Bill Schneider’s latest column in New West, What I’ve Learned from Gun Nuts. He’s obviously learned the wrong damned lesson, and Ride Fast schools him.

An excerpt:

I’ve learned that most gun owners aren’t hunters and some have nothing but scorn for hunters because we’re soft and care about other amendments. So, they mock us, calling us Elmer Fudds. But the hunter’s revenge is the Pitman-Robinson Act, which mandates excise taxes historically paid mostly by hunters, but now mostly paid by gun owners who never hunt or even loathe hunters as turncoats. Back at you, buddy.

Some, a small minority, may have jokingly called you Fudds, or maybe mocked you. Your guy, Zumbo, called me a terrorist. Who’s the nasty bastard now? Bill, the point is we should be on the same side. Hunters fully supporting mere gun owners, shooters supporting hunters, sheep dogs supporting collectors. It’s really is all about the guns.

As someone once said to me: You beat that man like a rented mule! Bravo!

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Another 12-hour day. I see my readers have been having fun in the comments! Here’s a golden oldie from Rev. Donald Sensing via a new blog, Occupied Nashville:

I think that others, mostly the various gun-control groups, really just can’t stand freedom exercised by others. They want to live their lives a certain way and make sure that everyone else does, too. They seek a highly ordered, regimented society made up of people just like them. This desire to control others is pernicious and dangerous. They are “invincibly ignorant” in their campaigns because the actual facts about guns in America mean nothing to them. They simply do not want you or me to own a gun, period, no matter for what reason. They do not want us to be free and sovereign. – Rev. Sensing, Heller and the right to bear arms

RTWT, as usual. Sensing’s worth it.

When You Can’t Have a Gun . . .

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When You Can’t Have a Gun . . .

. . . it must be nice that you can afford a bodyguard.

Players taking security measures after murders

MIAMI — Frightened NFL players are carrying guns and hiring bodyguards as they seek to avoid becoming victims of violent crime which has already claimed the lives of two players.

Seven players told the latest edition of ESPN The Magazine, to be published on Friday, that the murders last year of Washington Redskins Sean Taylor safety and Denver Broncos’ defensive back Darrent Williams, had raised the alarm among some of the country’s toughest sportsmen.

“We are targets, we need to be aware of that everywhere we go,” said Tampa Bay Buccaneers corner Ronde Barber.

Taylor was shot during a botched robbery at his home in South Florida while Williams was shot and killed outside a nightclub in Denver on New Years Eve, 2007.

This year, Oakland receiver Jevon Walker was robbed and beaten unconscious in Las Vegas and Jacksonville Jaguars lineman Richard Collier had to have his leg amputated after being shot and left paralyzed below the waist.

The response has been an escalation in security for the players and NFL Players’ Association president Kevin Mawae, of the Tennessee Titans, estimates half his team mates carry guns.

“If I had to guess about our locker room, I’d say it’s 50-50 when it comes to gun ownership,” he told the magazine.

50% is supposedly significantly higher than the national average. But then the national average is based on a survey, and Mr. Mawae actually works with the people he’s talking about.

“I don’t own a handgun. I have a hunting rifle. My job is to protect my family. If someone comes into my house? Game’s on,” he said.

Fred Taylor, a Jaguars team mate of Collier, said that not being able to carry guns at the team’s facility makes him feel vulnerable.

ARMED ROBBERY

“I have all the security measures at my house — systems, cameras, I can watch everything from my computer but I still don’t think I have enough. Who knows what is enough?

“League officials tell us we need to take measures to protect ourselves. But the NFL says we can’t have guns in the facility even in the parking lot. Crooks know this. They can just sit back and wait for us to drive off, knowing we won’t have anything in our vehicle from point A to point B,” says(sic)

Same for all of us working stiffs who work for companies with similar policies. Like Wal*Mart, for instance. Of course, many would argue that a Wal*Mart employee isn’t as likely to be targeted as a healthy, hulking NFL player in the 99th percentile of human size and strength. Just ask Joyce Cordova or the two other employees shot while collecting carts in the other story at that link. Or Megan Leann Holden.

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger told the magazine that he now has a bodyguard with him at all times.

“The one time I was scared the most, I didn’t have anybody with me. I don’t want to relive all the details, but this guy brandished a weapon in my face. I kept my cool and talked my way out of it. People showed up and helped get rid of the guy. That’s when I decided to have someone with me all the time,” he said.

Why carry a gun? An entire cop is too heavy. And for most of us, an entire bodyguard is too expensive.

Houston Texans cornerback Dunta Robinson suffered an armed robbery at his home, having a gun pointed in his face and being tied up, and says that was proof that even stay-at-home players, not just those who enjoy nightlife, can be at risk.

“It was the scariest moment of my life. You hear lots of stories of guys getting robbed and you say ‘Man, what were they doing, how did they get into that situation? Flashy guys. Rude Guys, Guys who act like they’re better than everyone. I don’t roll like that and it still happened to me,” he said.

Big salaries and high profiles, along with easily available travel schedules, make the players, easy targets but Dave Abrams, appointed as head of Denver’s security following the murder of Williams, worries their families may soon be prayed upon.

“What’s the next layer? Wives and children: a kid kidnapped for ransom, or some other kind of craziness. I’m scared to death that’s where criminals perceive the next vulnerability is for our players: their families.”

More people waking up.

I Will Not License, I Will Not Register. Period.

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This is what licensing and registration are for:

Gun purchase glitch raises questions

Del.’s small-arms advocates shocked over DSP recordkeeping

Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.

The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days.

Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele’s Lewes gun shop last August.

Problems started after Steele made the required phone call to state police for approval of the firearms transaction.

An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle’s age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.

Vansickle’s application was then routed to Sgt. Benjamin Nefosky, who heads the firearms approval unit.

According to MacLeish, the transaction was halted over concerns “based upon age and gender.”

“To be very honest with you, we have a legal obligation under the law to do approvals,” MacLeish said. “We also have an obligation to make sure we’re safe, and paying due diligence.”

MacLeish said the initial call taker “was concerned this individual never purchased a weapon before. Age and gender caused her to take caution.”

As to whether age and gender are included in the state statute as legitimate reasons to reject a firearms purchase, MacLeish stated, “No, they are not.”

“I believe there was caution taken on behalf of the call taker,” he said. “It was done without malice.”

Vansickle’s purchase was eventually approved — 10 days after the initial application — after she and the dealer were interviewed by police about the purchase. A normal delay is three days.

The sale eventually went through.
Government tracking feared

Word of the delay rebounded around Delaware’s small-firearms community, eventually making its way to Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor. Lawson spoke to his former colleague Nefosky about Vansickle’s dilemma, Lawson said.

Lawson said what Nefosky told him revealed there was a much larger problem in the firearms approval unit than keeping a small-caliber revolver out of the hands of an 81-year-old woman.

Lawson said Nefosky told him he searched seven years of firearms transaction records to see if Vansickle had ever bought a gun before.

Some gun owners fear any government agency that tracks gun purchases or keeps lists of who has them. They worry these lists could someday aid in weapons confiscation, fall into the wrong hands and serve as a road map for burglars and thieves, or result in increased scrutiny by law enforcement.

“I was totally drop-jawed,” Lawson said. “I asked him how far back the records went. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He felt she was possibly a threat because of her age, a threat to herself or her family. That’s what the implication was. He was concerned that never having bought a gun before, why would she want one now, at 81?”

Lawson served in the State Bureau of Identification as a lieutenant, which includes the firearms approval section and other specialty units. He knew the law. Nefosky’s concern about Vansickle’s age and sex, he said, should never have come into play.

Lawson also knew the gun records should have been destroyed.

MacLeish would not allow Nefosky to be interviewed.

In an interview with The News Journal, MacLeish claimed all paper firearms records are destroyed every 60 days.

The electronic records, however, are another story.

“Our review of our electronic records indicated we had a glitch in the system, back to August 2005,” he said. “They have since been purged.”

The electronic records never posed a threat, MacLeish said.

“The info was in an electronic file that no one did anything with,” MacLeish said. “We’ve since purged that file in its entirety.

Enter the National Rifle Association.
Civil rights of gun buyer at risk

John Thompson is president of the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, the local affiliate of the NRA.

Several people told him of Nefosky’s delay, and expressed their outrage about the list of gun owners maintained by the Delaware State Police.

Thompson, an attorney, had worked with state lawmakers in the early 1990s to craft the state’s background-check law.

Legally, he said, Vansickle’s reasons for wanting a firearm are moot, and he knew the lists were a problem.

“This suggests two violations: one is denial without cause, and the other is keeping records of gun purchases,” Thompson said. “Under statute, the Delaware State Police are required to destroy any purchase records that involve approvals. Now they’re maintaining lists of gun owners, which we think is inappropriate. We did not create this system to allow this to happen.”

Vansickle’s civil rights were violated, he said.

“There is nothing in the Second Amendment or the Delaware Constitution that says the right to own firearms is limited to people of a certain age,” Thompson said. “We don’t have any problem with age restrictions regarding children, but we don’t think someone ought to arbitrarily decide people are too old to own guns.”

Retired Dover police captain John Sigler is president of the National Rifle Association, a position once held by legendary actor Charlton Heston.

“I was literally shocked that such an event would occur in the state of Delaware,” he said. “I am very, very troubled that an individual — based on her age — was denied the ability to defend herself.”

Both Sigler and Thompson pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court found that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for personal use, such as self-defense.

While Sigler expressed “the highest respect” for the Delaware State Police and MacLeish, he found it intolerable that the agency “has been keeping records they’re not supposed to have, for at least seven years.”

“That means that for seven years that office has been violating Delaware state law and thumbing their nose at the state Legislature,” he said. “I certainly hope it’s not true, but it appears that it is.”

Sigler brought the goings-on in his home state to the attention of Bob Dowlut, NRA general counsel.

In a letter to MacLeish sent Aug. 28, Dowlut and the NRA requested two separate investigations: one to focus on Nefosky’s denial, “and all other transactions of similar scope and nature.” According to the letter, the second investigation should focus on who’s responsible for keeping lists of gun owners in the state.

“NRA respectfully requests to be notified about all actions taken to correct this situation,” Dowlut wrote. “At this time, there are a number of people urging the filing of a lawsuit to remedy this matter, however, taking of corrective steps immediately would be preferable to litigation for all concerned.”

MacLeish said two internal investigations “have been initiated by myself, by the division.”

Dowlut copied his letter to Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who declined to comment for this story.
Elderly woman’s husband speaks out

Vansickle’s husband, who has legally purchased several weapons over the past several years, spoke on her behalf about the delay.

“Apparently, they thought she might shoot herself with it,” said J.R. Vansickle, 83. “She has a clean record. There was no reason to turn her down. I lost both legs through diabetes. I’m in a wheelchair. We’re an elderly couple. She wanted the gun for self-defense in our home.”

The state police firearms unit was established as a result of the Brady Law, which took effect in 1994.

Nefosky supervises four criminal-history employees, who take calls from gun dealers around the state, and approve or deny the purchases based on the buyer’s criminal history.

According to state police, during 2006 and 2007, the unit processed 21,304 transactions, which have resulted in 711 denials.

Dowlet told the newspaper that for police departments, the types of problems the Vansickle case exposed are extremely rare.

“Most police departments, when they put someone in charge of a unit like that, they need to be completely familiar with the law,” he said. “There’s an anomaly here, someone in the Delaware State police who wasn’t following the law. Most police departments — especially in our litigious society — if that’s what the statute says, that’s how they enforce it.”

“Glitch” my aching sphincter. That was a deliberate decision made by a nanny-state employee – a “civil servant.” And as Heinlein once observed, “Civil Servant” is semantically equal to “Civil Master.” This is a perfect example of that fact.

Firehand has said about everything that I wanted to concerning the incident (as it’s been making the rounds of the gunblogs for a couple of days now) except this: Yes, I know that I have “licensed” myself by getting a CCW. Yes, I know that filling out a 4473 when I buy a firearm “registers” me and records the gun. But given the current state of things, it is not possible for the State to know exactly what or how many guns I own – just that I probably own several.

However, if an official licensing and registration scheme is implemented, I will not comply. As noted by Charles T. Morgan, at the time Director of the Washington office of the ACLU said in Senate testimony in 1975 when asked about gun registration:

What the administration’s and Congressman McClory’s bills . . . call for is a whole new set of Federal records. . . .

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of a record-keeping procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.

I am in complete agreement. That is, realistically, the only purpose of a registry. Now the gun owners of Delaware, some of them anyway, are aware that a defacto registry exists. Will any heads roll over this?

‘Tain’t likely, McGee.

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From someone who should know. . .

This is Mrs. Ly Chho, born of Chinese parents in Cambodia, raised and schooled in Taiwan, naturalized American citizen for fourteen years, and new NRA member, along with her husband who couldn’t make it with her to the NRA press conference yesterday evening because he had to work late.


Unfortunately, Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox were a bit late arriving, so the TV cameras left in the middle of their announcement in order to make the 6:30 news deadline, but (unsurprisingly) the NRA has officially endorsed McCain/Palin.

But that’s not, precisely, what this post is about.

After the announcement, Wayne and Chris took comments from the audience – mostly white people over the age of 40 (mostly well over) from what I could see – but this diminutive asian woman stood to ask her question and was recognized.

She asked, as best I can recall:

I am a new NRA member. I have been a citizen for only fourteen years. I believe in the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and when I see Obama, I see Communism, and I am afraid. I believe he is going to win the election. Do you have any plans in place if this happens?

Wayne LaPierre responded that we all have the blood of the patriots who threw the tea into Boston Harbor and stood on the bridge at Lexington and Concord in our veins (metaphorically speaking), and that the NRA would never rest, yada, yada, yada.

But that was a powerful statement from Mrs. Chho. I caught up to her to ask her about herself so that I could write this post. At the moment, the Chho’s do not own a firearm, but they are planning to get one as soon as they’ve gone through some NRA basic training. Mrs. Chho explained that she was educated in Taiwan, and had studied the U.S. Constitution, and had chosen to come to America and become a citizen because of that document. She loves and respects what America is, and Obama frightens her deeply.

And she should know.

Thank you, Mrs. Chho. You are another example of someone who is an American because she thinks she’s an American. It doesn’t matter what her ancestry is, or where she was born or where she was educated. She’s an American, and was one long before she made her citizenship oath.

Damned straight I’m a believer in American Exceptionalism.