<![CDATA[Gun Rights]]>

On Carrying Guns and Public Outcry

November 29, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Some people in the gun community enjoy a pastime I call “freaking the normies.” Basically, they opt to open carry simply to freak people out to some degree or another.

Now, many who do this see it as our responsibility to normalize the sight of firearms in the hands of law-abiding, responsible armed citizens and that open carry is a way to do it.

While I’m not a fan of open carry for my personal carrying options, I support people’s rights to do so, even if it is to “freak the normies.”

Yet can that be taken too far?

I ask because a recent headline out of Tennessee sort of sets the stage for it. The headline was, “Police: Man carrying gun near Memphis school did nothing illegal. How did it get here?”

Part of that answer is that the media got us there. In theory, a man walking around with a gun–in this case, an AR-15–shouldn’t be assumed to be up to something simply because he’s walking around with an AR-15. The media, however, has colored the public’s perceptions about these weapons to such a degree that people can’t help but freak out.

And freak they did.

On Monday, a man carrying an assault-style rifle caused panic in Memphis and sent a preschool and elementary school into lockdown.
However, Memphis police said he did nothing illegal, which led some Tennesseans to wonder how that can be.
“We are in a situation where somebody can walk down the street holding up an AR-15, and until they kill somebody there, they’re not doing anything wrong,” said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Metzl has done extensive research on guns in America and had built his Tuesday class around the viral photo of a man carrying a rifle in Memphis.
“Ten, 15, 20 years ago, we had pretty reasonable laws on the books here that allowed for people’s Second Amendment rights, but also promoted safety,” he said.

Except, they really didn’t. Those laws all restricted the right to keep and bear arms and most of those laws were also on the books 30 or 40 years ago when the homicide rates were sky high. They didn’t promote safety in any way, shape, or form.

Let’s remember that the dreaded AR-15 wasn’t even all that popular of a firearm until the Assault Weapon Ban was in the works. Then, suddenly, people flocked to the gun stores to buy these weapons before they were banned, then continued buying ban-compliant versions of the guns in an act of defiance.

I can argue that were it not for that law passing back then, this guy wouldn’t have been walking down the street with an AR-15 in the first place.

People like Metzl like to pretend they really know what’s going on, but they’re simply twisting facts to fit into a preconceived narrative, that guns are bad.

This individual broke no laws. Many people do this exact thing in part to illustrate that it’s not illegal and yes, to help normalize the sight of things like AR-15s so people will stop freaking out about them when they see them.

And that’s not about to change anytime soon, either.

After all, even Metzl has to acknowledge that this individual wasn’t an actual threat. He was simply there.

Now, do I think doing this is a great idea? Personally, I don’t. “Freaking the normies” like this could go sideways in a hurry and result in horrific ramifications for everyone involved.

But this also doesn’t mean the laws are insufficient to maintain public safety, either, which is what the anti-gunners want you to think. In fact, the only danger from this incident is someone overreacting to someone exercising their rights.

The sight of a gun shouldn’t freak anyone out. They should learn what it means when someone misuses a gun and be concerned about that.

It’s clear, though, that we have a long way to go to teach people the difference.

There’s Long Been Reason to Distrust the FBI

November 29, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Over the last handful of years, we’ve heard a lot about the weaponization of the federal government, including with agencies like the FBI. We saw a lot of evidence that the Bureau worked against President Donald Trump and isn’t really a good friend of the American people.

I have no doubt there are agents who are stalwart defenders of the Constitution. Don’t get me wrong. Yet the Bureau as a whole has issues and we’ve seen a lot of discussion in the hall of Congress about those issues.

Yet we need to remember that the issues with the FBI aren’t exactly new.

Instead, they started quite a while back, they were just a tad more subtle then. The most obvious clue was something we’ve talked about before, but came back up over at America’s 1st Freedom.

While Americans are frequently confronted with stories centered on guns being used to take lives, few are aware that many more humans are likely saved by firearms every year. A key reason for this lack of understanding is unreliable federal crime data—data that has too often been skewed by anti-gun politics.
As currently defined by the FBI, active-shooter incidents involve individuals who kill or attempt to kill people in a populated, public place, even if only one shot is fired or the intended target is not struck. Shootings that are related to other criminal activities, such as robberies or drug-turf wars, are not included in the FBI’s “Active Shooter Incident” reports.
But, according to economist John Lott, there was an abundance of cases missing or misidentified by the FBI, and while the FBI acknowledged errors, the Bureau failed to update the reports for accuracy purposes. Lott is the president and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), and also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) up until January 2021 as senior advisor for research and statistics evalutating the FBI’s reports.
“The FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher,” wrote Lott. He further noted, “[O]ut of 440 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2022, an armed citizen stopped 157. We also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard.”
He also emphasized that while the FBI claims that just 4.6% of active murderers were halted by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, his research found that the figure was at least 35.7%. A false statistic—like this 4.6%—misleads people and can prevent good policies from being passed.

Now, if these statistics existed in a vacuum, it wouldn’t be a big thing. They don’t.

Instead, these numbers are often spouted by anti-gun zealots seeking to undermine the idea that an armed citizen can actually make a difference. Now, I can dispute that argument easily enough even without the corrected statistics presented above, but the problem is that I shouldn’t have to.

These false statistics may well be mistakes, but in light of what we’ve seen from the FBI, I’m not feeling particularly charitable.

These “statistics” are skewed heavily in a way which advances a particular narrative, one that coincides with the politics we’ve seen out of the FBI a great deal of late. It advances the mistaken belief that good guys with guns are a myth and so there’s little reason for anyone to carry a gun.

And they’re used for just that purpose.

So we’re going to talk about why these statistics are bull. I’m going to keep bringing them up on a regular basis because the FBI numbers are going to keep being used until even the most shameless anti-gunner is afraid to bring them up.

Plus, I’m more than a little offended by the notion that even more of my tax dollars are going toward an effort to continue trying to take my fundamental, constitutionally protected rights.

If You Want Peace, Prepare For War: Why All Should Be Armed

November 29, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

A lot of people get armed for a lot of reasons. Those reasons generally don’t matter all that much because we don’t have to provide a reason why we want to exercise our Second Amendment rights, but those reasons exist and are varied.

People who live in high-crime areas tend to prefer not to become a victim. Some people recognize bad things can happen at any time and place. Still others figure they’ll never need it, but are armed simply because they have the God-given right to be armed.

Yet the flip side is that a lot of people refuse to carry a firearm. They believe the world should be better than it is and that there’s no reason for any of us to have a gun.

My friend Yehuda Remer, aka The Pew Pew Jew, had an interesting post over at his site that I think we should talk a bit about. It starts with a story from the Old Testament. Jacob and his family, with all their riches, are on the road to meet his brother, Eisav, who sanctioned his murder 20 years prior and who thinks Jacob is already dead.

To prepare for this meeting, Jacob does three things. The first is to send an offering to Eisav to hopefully make peace. The second was to pray. It’s the third thing that leads to why I’m writing this.

Lastly, and the real reason I am writing this blog, is that Jacob prepared for war. He split his family into two different camps to spare one if Eisav decided to attack. Of course, he would be willing to fight but still ensured some of his family would live.
Why is this important? Why is the preparation for war so integral to Jacob even though he had God’s ear? What can we learn?
I am a Jew who carries a firearm. I write about guns. I use firearms regularly. I train people on firearms and educate them on their Second Amendment rights. Unfortunately, Jews get a bad rap because so many of them are anti-gun and anti-2A, which is true. I know many Jews from all walks of life who hate firearms and believe that guns have no place in society. Well, my question to them is, if guns don’t have a place in society, how do we explain the fact that Jacob prepared for war? How is exercising my Second Amendment and carrying a firearm on my person to ensure my family is protected any different than what Jacob did?
The answer is that there is no difference.
“Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war.

Exactly.

Look, I’d love to live in a world where there was absolutely zero chance I’d ever need my gun for anything but recreational shooting. We don’t live in that world, we live in this one.

As such, I can and should take all the steps one can think of to prevent myself from becoming a victim and, as a society, we should take all the steps we can to make it so crime disappears forever.

Those of us who are the praying sort should do that as well, pray that those who would become violent criminals and those who already have find another way forward with their lives.

But we shouldn’t rest exclusively on those.

We should want peace, but we should prepare for war. At least in a manner of speaking, anyway.

Violence can and will come for some of us. We can and should do everything we can to mitigate the risk of that, but some of us won’t be fortunate enough to escape that.

So, we should be prepared to meet that violence with the threat of force and a willingness to use violence in the defense of ourselves or others if need be.

Biden Wants to ‘Finish the Job’ on Guns

November 29, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

President Joe Biden ran for office on a promise of passing gun control. He was as clear as he could be four years ago about what he wanted to accomplish, at least in regard to dismantling the Second Amendment.

And despite the old standard of politicians never keeping their promises, he certainly tried. I guess we have to give him credit for that.

Yet he didn’t get everything he wanted in this term. As it wraps up, he’s finally gearing up for a second term, and he promises to keep hammering away at our right to keep and bear arms.

Which elicited some comment from the NSSF’s Mark Oliva.

President Joe Biden’s campaign is waking from its slumber and vowing he will “finish the job” on gun control as a central pillar of his pitch to stay in The White House for another four years.
The Biden-Harris reelection campaign is circulating memos and reaching out to friendly media to make the case that President Biden will use a second term to usher in gun control’s radical unconstitutional agenda. That includes banning America’s most popular-selling centerfire rifle, the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR). That also means defying the will of Congress. White House officials are playing up bipartisan efforts but are making it clear that they are willing to strike out unilaterally if Congress doesn’t knuckle under to their demands.
“The president demonstrated that he can get things done, working across party lines when necessary, on our own where we can’t,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed told The Messenger.

That last part is hysterical considering how much Biden resorted to using executive action to try and push his anti-gun agenda.

But as Oliva notes, this might not be as great an opportunity for the president as he might like to think.

President Biden has already made clear he’s not listening to American citizens when it comes to guns. An NBC News national poll indicated that the majority of Americans live in a gun-owning household for the first time. The Biden-Harris reelection campaign, though, will lean on the political favors they’ve delivered for special interest gun control – specifically the deep-pocket donors who expect a return for their campaign donations.
President Biden continuously calls for Congress to re-enact the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported had no effect on reducing crime.
“Who the hell needs an assault weapon that can hold, in some cases, up to 100 rounds?” President Biden said just last month. This is the line of attack that he’s coupled with veiled threats of using U.S. military force against its own citizens.
“If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he said in 2021.

But AR-15s are a large chunk of those firearms in more than half of all American households. If he continues this jihad against such weapons, he’s likely to find that a lot of Americans who supported him four years ago–many in spite of his gun control efforts, not because of them–will decide not to vote for him this time around.

My guess is that Biden and his handlers are reading the polls that suggest Americans actually want gun control. However, we also know why those polls often suggest support that just isn’t there, and it’s because the discrepancy lies in the nuances pollsters rarely look at. People may like the concept, but the details change their mind.

Yet the thing is that Biden is going to push for this in addition to a lot of other things. Even Democrats who favor gun rights–yes, they’re out there–are generally going to be motivated to vote based on other issues. The same is true for most independents. They might not support gun control, but they want other things someone like Biden promises.

And there’s not a lot folks like you or I can do about that, either, except try to convince them that the Second Amendment is much more important than they think.

We should also remember to remind both Biden and other politicians that few people actually vote for gun control. They might support it, but again, there are other issues that matter more to them. Not supporting anti-gun legislation isn’t going to hurt them as much with the electorate as some might want to believe.

In the end, though, the truth is that Biden is still coming for our guns, regardless of the plethora of setbacks we’ve seen handed to people like him by the courts.

He wants our modern sporting rifles. He wants our magazines. He wants to kill youth shooting sports. He has no respect for our rights. Any of them.

So buckle up, ladies and gentlemen. Get ready for round 2.

Denying Supposedly Undeniable Massachusetts Stat

November 28, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has long been one of the most gun-controlled states in the nation and it’s quite clear they’re looking to take back the top spot from California.

And a lot of people in the state support that. I don’t understand it, but they do.

Which is fine, I suppose. People have a right to be wrong about all sorts of things.

What bothers me, though, is when they drop a statistic and pretend that’s all the evidence you need to know that gun laws like what exist in Massachusetts work.

People like this.

I feel like I have to preface this post by saying that I’m a second amendment guy.

I feel like anyone who feels they have to preface a piece like this is about to say something that shows this to be a lie. Also, Second Amendment guys tend to know that “Second Amendment” should be capitalized.

But the author wants to present us with a statistic he says “gun lovers can’t deny.”

Watch me.

Massachusetts #1 In The Country With This Gun Statistic
Gun control is a polarizing issue in the country, but there is no denying this fact:
Massachusetts has the lowest gun violence rate in the U.S.
Massachusetts, which already has tough gun laws, had the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country, at 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, compared to Mississippi, which had the highest rate, at 33.9 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the most recent statistics listed on the website for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The nation average is 14.8 deaths per 100,000 people.

Now, no one is going to deny that this statistic exists. It’s just meaningless.

The term “gun death” is a combination of everyone who died as the result of a gunshot. It obviously includes murder victims but also those killed in defensive gun uses, suicides and accidental shootings. It’s conflates all gun shot-related deaths as somehow the same.

So being number one in this is like saying you’re the world’s greatest Flugilist. It doesn’t actually mean anything.

Let’s break down this claim, though, and show why it’s absolutely meaningless and doesn’t suggest Massachusetts’ gun control laws are ultimately beneficial.

We’ll start by noting that suicides aren’t solved via gun control. Some might like to claim otherwise, and I get the argument that people are far less likely to survive a suicide attempt with a firearm than with any other method of taking one’s life. Still, those other methods still exist and a surprisingly high percentage of the total number of suicides fall into that camp.

And strict gun control doesn’t stop suicides. Look at Japan, whose suicide rate is more than twice what it is in the US. This is despite the strict gun control policies in place in Japan. Sure, most of those aren’t with a gun, but it shows that a firearm isn’t essential.

Accidental gun deaths are a very tiny subset of total “gun deaths” so we can actually dismiss them for the sake of argument here.

That mostly leaves us talking about homicides.

See, “gun deaths” also has a problem where it pretends people aren’t killed with other weapons. It muddies the water severely, but we actual Second Amendment folks will tell you that guns save lives.

So, when we look at the CDC’s homicide mortality rates by state, we see that Massachusetts is actually sixth on the list. Ahead of them? New Hampshire, Vermont, Wyoming, Maine, and Idaho.

All five of those are constitutional carry states. Four of those five are very, very pro-gun.

In fact, in the top ten on that list, only two are anti-gun states, of which Massachusetts is one. Hawaii is the other. If gun control worked so wonderfully, then why aren’t all ten.

“But Mississippi!” people like the author scream, but let’s face facts here, Mississippi has a lot of other things working against it there, including things like education and economics. To just cherry-pick this particular statistic and pretend that absolutely nothing else could be involved is just stupid.

So yeah, I can look at that statistic and deny it because it doesn’t mean what this person thinks it means. Especially when we know things are far more complicated than that.