Winning Gun Control Debate Shoot A Gun
courtesy nbcnews.com and AP
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Winning the gun control debate starts with firing a gun

And by that, Winkler means “how to enact common sense gun control laws” . . .

Pro-gun people ask why they should listen too hard about sensible gun reform — like fixing the abysmal background check system and criminal gun tracing, actually allowing meaningful research into gun violence — when not only are basic terms misused by gun reform advocates, but general facts about firearms are glossed over in favor of fear of the unfamiliar. The number of school shooting victims has gone down since the last 20 years; handguns, not “assault rifles” are the weapon used most often in firearm-related murders; the majority of gun deaths are suicides.

The issue of gun control and rights is complicated. Less complicated is just giving the actual shooting a shot. You may experience a funny, tingling sensation that its actually fun, and that’s perfectly normal! But shooting a gun also has the added benefit of giving you more of a leg to stand on the next time a gun debate inevitably comes up.

Illegal 3-D short-barrel rifle
courtesy dallasnews.com

Grand Prairie man who used 3-D printer to make gun is convicted on firearms charges

The title is misleading. It wasn’t the 3-D printing that was the problem here . . .

A Grand Prairie man prohibited from having a gun was convicted Wednesday on firearms charges after he shot a rifle that had a component made by a 3-D printer.

Following a two-day trial, a federal jury convicted Eric Gerard McGinnis of possessing an unregistered short-barreled rifle and unlawfully possessing ammunition while subject to an active protective order, said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox of the Northern District of Texas.

In July 2017, Grand Prairie police officers responded to reports of gunshots in a wooded area near North Belt Line Road and East Palace Parkway.

Shocking police bodycam footage shows Kansas cop open fire in a room full of CHILDREN – hitting a nine-year-old girl in the face

This is nauseating . . .

Shocking police bodycam footage has been released showing the moment a Kansas officer opened fire in a room full of children and injured a nine-year-old girl.

Wichita Officer Dexter Betts was fired after he shot at a dog he claimed was attacking him and wounded the child instead.

The bodycam footage, which was released Thursday, shows Betts’ flashlight illuminating the girl just moments before he fires at the dog in front of her.

Betts and and another officer were called to the home on December 30 after the girl’s mother, Danielle Maples, called 911 to report that her husband had put a gun in his mouth and wanted to harm himself.

Corporate America Increasingly Avoids Gun-Industry Business

De-platforming the gun business . . .

In the wake of high-profile mass shootings, corporate America has been taking a stand against the firearms industry amid a lack of action by lawmakers on gun control. Payment processing firms are limiting transactions, Bank of America stopped providing financing to companies that make AR-style guns, and retailers like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods imposed age restrictions on gun purchases.

The moves are lauded by gun-safety advocates but criticized by the gun industry that views them as a backhanded way of undermining the Second Amendment. Gun industry leaders see the backlash as a real threat to their industry and are coming to the conclusion that they need additional protections in Congress to prevent financial retaliation from banks.

“If a few banks say ‘No, we’re not going to give loans to gun dealers or gun manufacturers’, all of a sudden the industry is threatened and the Second Amendment doesn’t mean much if there are no guns around,” said Michael Hammond, legal counsel for Gun Owners of America. “If you can’t make guns, if you can’t sell guns, the Second Amendment doesn’t mean much.”

Dick Heller Supreme Court Heller v DC
courtesy AP

10 years after Heller: Fiery gun rights rhetoric, but courts back Second Amendment limits

And the Supreme Court continues to stay on the sidelines . . .

Over the past decade, courts have rejected legal challenges to background checks, restrictions on assault weapons and large capacity magazines, prohibitions on gunpossession by felonsand domestic abusers, and licensing requirements to carry a gun in public. In fact, courts have rejected the vast majority of claims that the Second Amendment precludes the passage or enforcement of gun safety laws — around 90 percent, according to one recently published academic study. The small remainder of cases in which these challenges have been sustained involved unusual laws, including handgun bans, total bans on carrying guns in public, or outlier licensing requirements.

The explanation for this overwhelming pattern of courts upholding gun laws is not complicated, although it is often ignored in the heated public debate around guns and the Second Amendment. While the Heller decision controversially recognized an individual right to own guns, it also recognized that “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” The Supreme Court emphasized that its decision did not “cast doubt on” laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by felons and people with dangerous mental illnesses; laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places like schools; regulations on gun sales; and prohibitions on certain dangerous weapons.

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38 COMMENTS

  1. Never call the cops unless it’s a real SHTF situation. They’ll shoot you and your dog. “I’m sceered”. Like the shooting in Chiraq where the FAMILY called 5-0 to subdue the psychotic baseball bat wielding son. Who was murdered as well as the poor downstairs lady who opened the door. Family got over $16000000. The jury is out for the family who called the cops to kill their kid…

    • Give a person a badge, a gun and the power to shoot dogs. They will likely use the power you gave them.

      Where is the outrage from vegetarian and vegan anti gun people? I don’t really see those people calling for laws to stop cops from endangering the public by not allowing them to use firearms against domesticated dogs.

      Sometimes they literally can kill innocent people and say it’s within policy thus justified. I guess they think it’s your fault for standing in-front of their bullets. Actually, it is our fault for allowing such a police force to exist. At least we can buy body armor.

  2. Don’t give this garbage about cops having a hard job or needing to act fast. The four rules apply to EVERYONE. Repeat after me: Know your target and what is beyond it.

    • So you’re walking to your car in a parking lot and a guy comes at you with a knife. You draw a gun but he keeps coming. How do you know what’s behind him, assuming he’s not helpfully in front of a concrete wall? Can you see through him? Can you use your x-ray vision to see through the minivans and SUVs behind him? Might there be someone on the other side? Since you can’t possibly know what’s behind your target, do you let him stab you?

      That 4th rule is great for the range and hunting, it’s almost meaningless in a defensive shoot.

      • Yet that cop knew exactly who was in that room and that a dog was in the house. He could have closed the door so the dog wouldn’t come out.

        There’s reality and then there’s your world.

        What would you do if a cop shot your child in the head because he was scared of a small dog that was defending your child from a stranger? You know he has mace, a baton and a taser? He might even have some tough shoes or a knife.

      • You are still personally responsible for every bullet that leaves your gun. I would rather have been bit by the dog than shoot a 9 year old. YMMV.

      • Finally someone out and said it: Rule 4 does NOT apply to a gunfight! Read that again, because it might save your life. Ever since the ‘don’t use a weapon mounted light because you’d have to point your gun at everyone’ argument I’ve been plagued by thoughts about it. The rules as promulgated on the range, as trained that is, are not sufficient for fighting. Once the two way gun play starts, pointing your gun at someone/everyone without firing on them is not only acceptable, it’s pretty much the rule. If your gun isn’t pointed pretty much where you are looking, that’s how you know it’s pointed in the wrong direction.

        Perhaps a better 4 rules for combat would be
        1 guns are only loaded if you are sure its loaded.
        2 still works if you train that way
        3 its opposite day, if it might possibly be a threat, make sure your gun is pointed at it
        4 if you have the luxury of not taking a shot with a crowd around and behind your target, great, but keep in mind you might have to anyway.

        I’m sure someone could come up with a more wieldy 4 for combat, but these will do better than the traditional 4.

  3. Frankly, I consider that Jeff Winkler article a positive thing. A liberal writer advocating that people should go to a range and that they might actually enjoy themselves? I call that winning.

    • Strange, I read the 1st three paragraphs and concluded he was a moron from a family of morons. Buy a .410 handgun to kill a squirrel? Go hunting for the critter in your ATTIC? Pattern it on the side of a plastic can YOU DON”T OWN? “Pops” a moron, some chick hooked up with him so SHE is a moron and they produced a moron.

      • I read the article too, and you’re right. That Jeff Winkler guy is a moron sired by morons. Yet more evidence that the anti-gun side of this argument is populated largely by ignoramuses and idiots.

  4. Let’s look at the differences in the way police are treated after a defensive shooting:
    A citizen that uses deadly force, even justifiably, will be immediately handcuffed and arrested, until the situation is “sorted out”. He will most likely be “detained” in a holding cell at the police station until the prosecutor makes a decision whether to prosecute. Questioning by police will most certainly be forceful and immediate, with police interrogators purposely trying to “trip up” the citizen by attempting to elicit contradictory statements–standard police interrogation tactics.
    A police officer in an identical situation will NOT be handcuffed or arrested. The police officer will be afforded a union attorney and will have 72 hours in which to “get his story straight”. In addition, a police-friendly prosecutor will most likely hesitate to prefer charges, as “they are on the same team”. Most likely an extended taxpayer-paid “vacation” (administrative leave) will result.
    Not so for the ordinary citizen.
    Double standard?
    You bet…

    • You are right that a cop will, at the scene, not generally be handcuffed. However some of the statements you added are meaningless.

      “”The police officer will be afforded a union attorney…”

      An officer is entitled to a ‘union attorney’ only through his benefits of being a paid union member. There is nothing intrinsic to being a cop here (and there are lots of police that do not belong to a union, particularly in the South). Any non-cop also has the right to an attorney, and that’s one reason a lot of conceal carriers have some form of legal insurance.

      “and will have 72 hours in which to “get his story straight…”

      This is the truly meaningless part. You do realize that every citizen of the United States has the 4th Amendment right to remain silent, right? You have UNLIMITED time to ‘get your story straight.’ In this sense the cop has less rights than a non-cop, insofar as if he does not render a full report within the designated time period, he gets fired. A plumber who happens to shoot someone can remain silent indefinitely and have no repercussions.

      • 5th amendment. And your plumber will be in a room with trained interrogators who will say things like, “What aren’t you cooperating? It makes you look like you’re hiding something.”. “We just want to clear this up, answer son questions and you can go home.” “Don’t you want to tell us your side before this is in the news?”. “That makes you sound guilty.” Etc.

        The officer has the advantage of legal training (at an academy) the armed citizen doesn’t have, plus sovereign immunity, plus a presumption (if there’s no obvious evidence to the contrary) that they did the right thing.

        • Only if the plumber is stupid. “I’m not answering any questions without my lawyer present” stops those trained interrogators from asking more questions.

          Only a fucking retard talks to the cops without a lawyer. If you do, well, play stupid games….

      • B.S. Hannibal. .I worked in California and cops were treated with kid gloves, all others, detained and most who clammed up either had to make bail or a prelim appearance to go free unless it was the most righteous shooting. Northern California was somewhat better, but it really varied even north of Sacramento

      • Gov’t employees get a marxist club (union) with which to abuse their employers (the taxpayer)? What idiot thinks that is appropriate. You don’t want to work for your friends and neighbors then get a job.

      • Hannibal, you’ve been posting on TTAG for a long time and I’ve always found your comments to be thoughtful and cogent. I think you’re a good cop. On reading about and seeing the Betts video, my first thought was to wonder how someone can stand to work around such incompetence but, in truth, I think I know. Although I’ve never been in law enforcement, I have worked within politicized, corrupt bureaucracies. What I found myself doing was trying to make a living in a cesspool of thuggery and corruption while simultaneously, along with some people I could trust, trying to do the best job I could do. There just wren’t enough of us. There just aren’t enough good cops.

  5. A military service member who shoots someone, even if his life is threatened, has NO protection against being charged with a crime and can always be “second-guessed” by his superiors or JAG. A police officer can shoot someone and then utter the magic words: “I feared for my life”, even if the suspect is beyond the reach of the police officer. Police-friendly prosecutors routinely give cops “the benefit of the doubt”, even in questionable situations. Of course, special rules apply to cops that do not apply to civilians or military. After a questionable shooting by a cop, he will be afforded a union attorney, is not required to make a statement for 48 to 72 hours, and quite often gets a “taxpayer-paid vacation” while the event is “swept under the rug. You see, unlike military and legally-armed civilians, cops operate under NO “rules of engagement”. Behavior that would get a military person or civilian in deep trouble is routinely excused by the powers-that-be, when it comes to cops.

  6. I’d be interested to hear from some of these lower court judges how the Second Amendment is not limited. They read that bit of dicta in Heller and it’s become the rationalization for any conceivable restriction. “Not unlimited” should not have translated to “any limits are fair game”.

  7. Go out and shoot a gun, says Winkler. Great, that’s just great.

    But saying that gives you a leg to stand on in a debate on guns, is about the same as saying that if I go out and kiss a dude once, that makes me an expert on gay rights. (To clarify: I am indeed male and hetero. Or is it cis? Or reversed trans? Geez … this is way more complicated than magazines vs. clips.)

  8. Bad shoot. There is NO excuse for what he did. None. Why the fuck do dogs of any size scare the living shit out of cops? How jittery do you have to be to find it justifiable to shoot a small dog, and a child!?! This was not a rabid 120 lb pit that was lunging for you, it was a dog you could toss like a football if need be. Fucking pathetic.

  9. “The issue of gun control and rights is complicated”

    Actually it’s not,unless one can’t or doesn’t want to read plain english or is a Lefttard moron.
    Shall Not Be Infringed !

    • ” …it also recognized that “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” ” Except for the part where it literally says shall not be infringed.

  10. This is insane. That dog was tiny, and that POS cop was so scared he shot a kid over it. He should get the noose for that. If this was a large Rott or something else that posed an actual threat, I might have some sympathy. This wasn’t that though. If any normal person threw down in the street because a 15 lb dog charged them, and they hit a kid, they would do hard time. Cops are supposed to be our best people who go into danger to protect the public, not sadists/wimps who shoot at toy poodles with no regard for the fact that there are a bunch of kids around. What next? A cop in Sioux City doing two mag dumps into a guy at a donut shop because he was intimidated by his Three Wolf Moon shirt? This needs to stop.

    • At about 3:10 the cop who’d just shot a little girl in the head approaches another cop and casually asks if he say “the big dog”. The other cop responds with a I-don’t-know-I-didn’t-see kind of answer that basically signals that he doesn’t want to be involved in this guy’s shit but doesn’t want to overtly criticize a fellow officer. Context here is important. You have terrified little kids standing there, a hysterical father who’s just had his daughter shot . . . and this guy is casually asking for confirmation that the dog was “big”. I get that some people are terrified of dogs, don’t like being around them, and are prone to panic when a dog acts aggressively as family dogs will do when trying to defend “their” children. I get too, that police work is stressful and domestic disturbance situations are especially so. Countless videos show police officers shooting family pets that didn’t need to be shot. Maybe police officers who are phobic about dogs shouldn’t be police officers? Just, sayin’ . . .

  11. . Ironicatbest would get super flame Deleted on his thoughts of the police officer shooting the child and dog. Had this been someone other then a police officer cops on this site would have had bad things to say about the idiot, moron, drug addict, fatherless degenerate scum of society that needed shot. However wearing a Badge the other Badges defend him. Hopefully when you all die, and you wil die as death is 100℅, you will be reincarnated into something better, perhaps an earthworm or magot.

  12. For financial services why not try HSBC? HSBC have previously dealt with shady characters. They aren’t known as “The Cartels’ Bank” for nothing (the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cali Cartel, the Medillin Cartel, etc). They even installed extra large cash draws to assist their customers with their sizable deposits.

    If there’s a buck in it, honest or otherwise, HSBC will be involved.

    • The above post was semi serious about other financial institutions withdrawing their services to the manufacturers and providers of legal products and semi sarcasm about the shady dealings of HSBC in providing financial services to those clearly breaking the law.

      • It’s a CHICOM “bank”/front org for the PLA. What would you expect.

        HSBC – The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

  13. The police should decline to respond to domestic disputes.
    If trashy folks want to kill or maim one another — let em. It will improve the community and help raise our declining national per capita IQ.
    Cities, churches and liberal nanny state organizations can have unarmed finger-wagging teams to respond to such incidents.

  14. The courts issue is not complicated at all. Most of the anti-gun judges were hand-picked by Clinton and Obama.

    Regarding the Supreme Court, it is better for them to sit tight for now. Until Anthony Kennedy and Roy G Biv (Ruth Bader Ginsburg) are replaced, we just can’t trust them to protect our rights.

    Don’t forget, the Heller and McDonald decisions were BOTH 5-4 rulings.

  15. The best way to fight the banks is to leave a polite message on those bank solicitation letters you receive in the mail. Use their self addressed stamped envelope and say that you will not do business with a company that is anti civil rights and he would prefer to take your business elsewhere.

    That kind of message they will listen to.

  16. I don’t know how old Jeff Winkler is but, I see posts of his going back to 2012. I’m calling bs on the whole story. The Taurus judge was only released in 2006, if he was 12 then he can be at most 24 years old. Was working in journalism at 18?

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