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“For most of Obama’s administration he faced a hostile Congress, making it very difficult for him to pursue his agenda [on gun policy]. Trump has the majority in both houses and will have the Supreme Court. Democrats have very little to say about it at this point.”” – Adam Winkler in Gun Sales Might Slump Under Trump — But He Could Fire up the Industry [via nbcnews.com]

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70 COMMENTS

  1. If trump can do something about illegals voting in CA we may see a dramatic change in our nations direction. Not just guns.

      • What’s wrong with that(sarc)?

        All my dead relatives vote demoncrat. It should actually be a funny, yet sad statistic when the dems can boast that the entire landing force at Normandy now votes D.

      • Yea, 90.000 dead people from Durham got the POS Roy Cooper (I call him Pooper, talks like he has a mouth full of crap, oh that’s right, he does) elected gov of NC. I hope a ton of shit buries him.

    • Since we’re veering off topic…how about Putin pulling Trump’s puppet strings?

      Or is that ok with you because Putin is a just a Commie in Commie Land and not an “illegal” in The People’ Republic of Commiefornia?

      • As a child of the 80’s I’m loving this neo-Mcarthyist Cold War rebirth hysterical war mongering coming from the democrats and the geriatric republicans with dementia.

        Putin took his shirt off and Podesta replied to an obvious phishing email!!!!! DUCK AND COVERRRRRRR!!!!!!

        • This is one of the things that I definitely prefer Trump over Clinton on.
          Had she been elected, they’d need to advance the doomsday clock back to the USA v. USSR days. Clinton seemed almost eager for a war with Russia. Russia is definitely not a free republic to be admired, but that doesn’t mean we should destroy the world going to war with them. Instead we should open trade with them and convince them to move in the direction of freedom.

          Maybe that’s why Russia didn’t want her to win.

        • Putin has changed Russia’s nuclear policy to say that use of nukes on the battlefield is fine. And he want to almost cripple what’s left of their economy to modernize their obscene arsenal.

          Trump’s response is basically “Bring it!”

          Putin wanted Trump elected not because he likes Trump, but because he thinks Trump will weaken the U.S. — that’s the only criterion the Tzars (whatever they’ve pretended to be called) have ever had. And with a weaker U.S., Putin thinks he can break NATO. How does he think Trump will weaken the U.S.? By polarizing us worse than we already are (and probably, given the numbers for the policy proposals of Trump during the campaign, to see our debt shoot to a breaking point like that which really broke the Soviet Union).

      • I’m missing where he’s “pulling Trump’s puppet strings.” As far as I can tell the only one pushing that narrative has been CNN, MSLSD, and the like. It’s been fairly well debunked by every news source outside of those that are known to be the Democrat’s back pocket.

        On the flip side, we have a sitting president that HAS been played as a patsy by the Putin because he knows Obama doesn’t have the stones to actually do anything about it. Even the Democrat presidential candidate (who shall remain nameless here for fear of invoking her) was a proponent of outright war with Russia.

        Democrats gasp when someone says this: Putin is a strong leader. He’s an evil communistic sonofabitch, but he’s a strong leader. We haven’t had one of those in a LONG time and Putin knows this. I don’t know if Trump will be a strong leader or not, but at the very least his current wild card status and bombastic approach are giving Putin pause.

        • “It’s been fairly well debunked by every news source outside of those that are known to be the Democrat’s back pocket.”

          Are there any news sources that are not in the Democrats’ back pocket?

        • I can’t seem to remember. Who was it that, in a “hot mike” moment, leaned close to Medvedev and said “After my election I have more flexibility.”?

          There’s being a puppet and there’s offering fellatio to a foreign head of state.

          Maybe Putin just wanted to work with a president that had a little integrity.

        • You know you done goofed when MSNBC and the other liberal outlets are calling CNN out on how stupid the story was. CNN is just barely a notch above National Enquirer and Telemundo at this point, and I loved watching Trump shut that impolite jerk down at the press conference.

        • Just today U.S. armored forces arrived to strengthen Poland, 3500 of America’s best to stand where Russia has been trying to meddle. Who sent them? Obama did, as a follow-up to his promise, given in Estonia, that the U.S. will not let its NATO allies be abused by Russia.

          Please, guys — there’s enough to criticize Obama for as a really crappy president without bringing in memes that don’t fit him.

      • More fake news. Keep in mind that people who make their living working in national security need a bogeyman in order to justify their jobs. If they can’t find one, they will invent one, and make it look very real.

        Over the past eight years Obama has created a huge void in the area of international leadership. Is it a big surprise then that some other national leader should step in and try to fill that void? Vladamir Putin.

        So, if you stop looking at Russia from the fun-house mirror provided by the intelligence community you might see that they are not the same threat they were during the era of the Soviet Union and communism. For the most part they are just folks like everyone else, trying to get by day by day. And the Russian people LOVE Putin!

        Background: I met my wife (ex) in St. Petersburg. We were married 8 years and are amicably divorced. I know a lot of Russians, some Crimeans, and have visited Russia and stayed there in Russian homes. Putin is no more a communist than Trump is. There are more Bernie Sanders supporters in America today than there are communists left in Russia. And yet we trade extensively with China, an aggressively communist country while pretending we should hate and distrust the Russians who are trying very hard to become a modern capitalist society. Gangsters? Sure. Corruption? Of course. But we have those too, so what’s the big deal? It’s past time to stop fearing Russia and start normalizing our relationship with them. It may be a very good idea if the Chinese get too aggressive, as they seem to be these days, and we need to sever or curtail some of the manufacturing ties we have established with them.

        • Manufacturing ties with China do need to be severely curtailed. I found it unbelievable that I could not buy American manufactured tires for my 5th wheel RV, don’t exist anymore. Just one of too many examples that we have given away the country. I often point to Henry & Ruger firearms as being 100% American made, and they are adamant abut staying that way. Henry, “Made in America or not made at all”. Ruger, “100% American Made”, actually down to the RAW materials. I despise companies that do not follow this line of thought.Interesting to see that Trump has already done more for the US economy (& he’s not even sworne in yet) that O’Shithole did in 8 years; companies cancelling moving production out & some that did are now setting up to bring it back.

        • Jeff I agree with your sentiments- but feel the need to point out that the purpose of a business is to make money. Not by ANY means of course, but the reason so much manufacturing is in China is cost- helping businesses make more money. Nothing wrong with that. The question then becomes why was/is it so much cheaper to manufacture in China?

        • Obama’s problem is he bought into the ridiculous idea that since we “won” the Cold War all we have to do is “let democracy prosper”, believing that somehow democracy is a magic wand that cures things and keeps rolling inevitably forward.

          That played right into Putin’s program of working to discredit democracy itself all around the world. that’s really why he’s got Russian bombs falling in Syria — he doesn’t care who wins in Syria, what he cares about is shoving millions of destabilizing refugees into Western countries.

          Obama was serious about protecting America, but he was playing checkers while Putin has been playing chess. In Russia, the mobs take orders from the security apparatus — even the foreign branches of those mobs. The church there takes orders from Putin, as do the corporations and everything. Obama looked at the board and saw military checkers as the only pieces, while Putin has been using every aspect of Russian society as pawns, knights, bishops, rooks… every piece possible in play.

          It’s what comes from electing a community organizer, when the world is not a community and isn’t interested in being organized.

        • Jeff & BigE, you’ve got a point about China. We should have — as a Democrat politician from thirty years ago said! — made part of NAFTA a provision that penalized companies sending jobs presently not outside of the NAFTA countries to any place outside of NAFTA, on the principle that it’s better to benefit our neighbors if we can’t benefit ourselves. If we’d done that, arguably there would be about five million fewer Mexicans here illegally now, because they’d have good American-corporate jobs in their own country.

          It’s not too late to do that. But there’s something else going on, too: I keep reading articles where it’s reported by economists that China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, and others are now complaining that the number of manufacturing jobs in their countries is decreasing. Why is that so? Because thanks to the presence of Western companies in those countries, wages have risen to the point that it is now profitable for their manufacturers to automate. In the next four years, ten million jobs are going to disappear in China and southeast Asia, and they won’t be coming here, they’ll be going to robots. SO we can’t just say “Bring the jobs home”, we have to figure out how to do that while millions of jobs are being taken away from humans around the globe.

      • Oh what an utter load of shit. If you think Putin is “pulling Trump’s strings” you need to go lock yourself in your garage and get your car running for a few hours.

      • DaveR, a better question in light of what we now know, tell us how stupid you feel after falling hook, line and sinker for this fake news!? You really have to be an idiot to believe the kind of childish crap morons are making up in their mommy’s basement and firing out to the suckers over the internet.

      • Was it not Obama who was caught on a live mic making a comment that he would be much more free after the elections? I am still wondering what he was talking about. From all that he accomplished, I had the feeling he was talking about handing the nation over to Putin as a new satellite.

        Yeah, I’m an old Republican, or Federalist, or at least a Constitutionalist. I believe in the idea of Ronald Reagan dealing with MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) maintaining a form of checks and balances between the nuclear armed nations.

        • Unfortunately Putin doesn’t believe in MAD – he thinks he can us tactical nukes on the battlefield and the West won’t hit his cities. The current batch of Russians is less sane than the Soviets were.

      • The only puppet here is YOU.

        Trump has NO CONNECTION TO PUTIN.

        THE CLINTONS (and her campaign manager) MADE MILLIONS OFF OF PUTIN AND HIS FRIENDS.

        Take your lips off your bong AND WAKE UP:

        Report: FBI says no direct ties between Russia, Donald Trump’s campaign

        http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-fbi-says-no-direct-ties-between-russia-donald-trumps-campaign/

        NY TIMES: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal

        http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

        WIKILEAKS: Podesta Continued Ties to Russian Firm After He Said He Divested

        http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/WikiLeaks-podesta-russian-firm/2016/10/30/id/756044/

        Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection

        http://observer.com/2016/04/panama-papers-reveal-clintons-kremlin-connection/

    • “If trump can do something about illegals voting in CA we may see a dramatic change in our nations direction. Not just guns.”

      Yes, indeed.

      All a part of the plan. If the justice seated to replace Scalia is politically reliable, we will need at a bare minimum a Progressive justice replaced by a politically conservative.

      With a ‘hard’ lock on SCOTUS, we can have voter ID laws ruled constitutional. And other good things…

      • Maybe — for most of U.S. history, if you lived and worked you, you got to vote. The concern for I.D. is a recent phenomenon, and there;s nothing in the Constitution for guidance.

        What we need are some justices who are deep down convinced that the principle established with voting has to extend to all rights: no financial burden at all on the exercise of a right. That would make people on both sides happy, because one of the biggest reasons voter I.D. laws was not the requirement of I.D. but that it would cost a lot of people (including my elderly mother!) a good deal to comply. And it would immediately end any NICS fee, ammunition tax, gun tax, NFA tax, permit fees, etc.; if government wanted to keep doing those things they would have to be free.

        And then voter I.D. would be almost certainly constitutional, and for the same reason that all the costs government imposes on gun owners would be unconstitutional.

  2. Poor Barry. He must have been so depressed when he and the Dem houses (with a bit of help from a left-ish SCOTUS) rammed Obamacare up our b, oops, down our throats.

    My heart’s bleeding, Bert, my heart’s bleeding.

  3. It still takes 60 votes in the Senate to invoke cloture and break a filibuster, and the Republicans don’t have 60 votes. Harry Reid’s “nuclear option” does not affect votes on laws, only certain appointments.

    The Democrats cannot rule, but they can ruin. And they will.

    • Agreed, though not on everything. Too many D senate seats up in 2018 in states which Trump carried, and some in frankly red states. If the Dems stand in the way of too many popular policies, they risk losing big. Though, as rabid as the left has gotten in it’s building desperation, maybe fears of big losses in 2018 won’t even give them pause.

      • Even if Senate Democrats went to the Nth degree to disrupt everything, why would anyone vote against them if they have no idea that those Senate Democrats were obstructionists? (Hint: the Democrat controlled dominant news media would have to alert the masses to Senate Democrat shenanigans … I don’t see that happening.)

        • A hypothesis, if I may:

          Democrats (Obama) put a free smart phone in the hands of a whole lot of people that would typically get their news only from TV sources, all of which are owned by the Democrats. These new, free cell phones suddenly give the otherwise single source news folks access to the entire spectrum of news. A lot of them that actually bother to use the phone for something other than Candy Crush probably stick to their familiar networks for information, but I’d bet a good portion of them are seeing ACTUAL news for the first time and actually starting to think for themselves, slightly.

        • i have seen some of this. there is some eagerness to access anything new on these phones oso much smarter than mine, even after explaining that the site “may not be targeting your demographic.”
          as holmes and goff have said on local sports radio (paraphrasing), “engaged in passionate conversation like a group of black men discussing mobile data plans.”

        • There are now alternatives to the Democrat controlled News Media and people are going to them. In droves. The Democrats don’t monopolize the news any more. It’s over.

        • Odd — I know seven people who got “Obamaphones”, and none were smart phones, so the only news they’d be able to get would be text messages.

    • Who needs the nuclear option when we have the actual option?

      Force the Democrats actually to stand up and filibuster. No more of these virtual filibusters where they just say we need 60 votes, then sit down, and 60 is the new threshold.

      They want to shut it down? Then do the actual work of filibustering and let the political spectacle play out.

      • “Who needs the nuclear option when we have the actual option?”

        That’s right, just because we won the election doesn’t mean we’ve taken civil war off the table. There’s a sh_t-ton of POS (D) out there that voted for more of this BS, and we’re getting tired of the game.

      • “Force the Democrats actually to stand up and filibuster. No more of these virtual filibusters where they just say we need 60 votes, then sit down, and 60 is the new threshold.”

        So much *This*.

        If they wanna filibuster, make ’em work for it. Get creative about it, if necessary…

      • Except now the whineycrats won’t bother to filibuster. They’ll just stage a “sit-down strike” while taking selfies and videos of their “protest” in the Capitol building…

    • That assumes, of course, that a Republican-controlled Congress will actually work to push GOP plank issues – including those related to the second amendment.

      If they try, though – get ObamaCare repealed, force democrats to filibuster gun-rights legislation, and maybe, if we’re lucky, actually pass some balanced budgets – then the GOP will have some huge gains in the Senate in 2018.

      Now is the time to force the democrats to play defense.

      I’m not confident that the GOP will play offense.

      • “I’m not confident that the GOP will play offense.”

        I am not convinced, either. Why? Because Republicans are part of the same Establishment as the Democrats. If you look over the course of the last 80 years or so, all Republicans do is slow down the march toward full-blown Socialism — they never reverse it. Recent implementation of Constitutional carry in a handful of states would be the only exception that I can spout off the top of my head.

      • I think the best bet would be to tell the Democrats that they can have any court nominees they prefer so long as they’re approved by the GOA and JPFO. It would look good for Trump, because nominees would sail through.

        And really that’s my only hope — corporations aren’t interested in gun rights, corporations own all the Congresscritters, so Congresscritters aren’t really interested in gun rights.

  4. Obama also had a friendly house and senate coming in. If I recall correctly, he started with a 60 seat majority in the senate.

    So, moral of the story: Don’t spend your years of key advantage and huge amounts of political mojo to do something as spectacularly stupid and unpopular as obamacare. Or, in this case, promising to repeal obamacare, but keeping the taxes, regs, and individual mandate and calling it something else. Or, failing to deliver on your promises of border security. Or, yes, “compromising” with the Dems on gun control in some way.

    • The Affordable Care Act was lifted from the Heritage Foundation, so Obama thought it would be a slam dunk. He didn’t count on a whole array of GOP COngresscritters who decided from the stat to oppose anything and everything Obama wanted, regardless of what it said or where it came from.

      The tragedy is that it was opposed as “socialism” when it was really a conspiracy to use government force to provide customers to giant insurance companies. It was just what George Washington said, that government is force, and nothing but, and in this case government used force to guarantee customers.

      And the Republicans in Congress ignored a good half dozen solid market reforms that would have worked better.

  5. It’s good to see NBC endorse the NRA’s theory that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun:

    If criminals are already getting guns, the idea of them getting silencers may not seem any worse. Until you consider the fact that were a mass shooter to use a silencer, death tolls would surely rise, and people who have permits to carry concealed weapons would be less likely to know that a shooting is taking place and step in because they wouldn’t be able to hear it.

    “If someone who is carrying a gun lawfully doesn’t know a mass shooting is happening, how can they help out? If you can’t hear the gun shots how do you know someone is coming at you?” said Winkler.

    • Seriously????? suppressors don’t “silence” anything. People will hear the shots and see the weapon……….. you’d think if this was such a hazard, someone would’ve already shot up a school with a homemade súppressor

  6. “There’s always a black market for silencers; but because silencers are so difficult to get, the black market for them is relatively small,” said Winkler. “By making them easily available, we can expect to make a bigger black market.”

    Anyone with a hardware store near by can make a silencer for a few dollars, the reason most of us don’t just do that is the risk of federal persecution, an attitude most criminals don’t share.

    • When somebody is totally ignorant of a thing the thing becomes magic.
      Winkler clearly knows jack shit about suppressors so it’s all witchcraft and wizardry to him. Nobody could possibly jam an oil filter onto the end or a barrel or shove some washers into an old maglite.

      To a fool like Winkler it takes millions of dollars of machinery, a team of MIT grads and perhaps two or three gamma knives to produce one suppressor each year.

    • I am not an economist, and neither is he, but when things are more difficult to get (prohibition, drugs, etc) the black market grows to fill the void. Not the other way around.

      • Indeed. The only reason criminals don’t usually use suppressors is that it effects carry logistics. It’s easy to shove a pistol in your waistband. But throw an additional 5″ on the end? Now you’re talking about having to create a special shoulder rig just to carry it with any degree of comfort. That’s simply too much work for too little gain, save for the high end hitmen.

      • This is exactly what I came to say. Bans on legal product or service effectively create black market for said product or service. Forbid/regulate/overtax sale of AAA batteries or bar soap and watch the black market fill the artificially created void.

  7. Back on point, Gun sales have slowed. Fear of banning, etc. drove the market for too long and now the new “norm”
    sucks if you are a LGS.

    • We had to have something more ‘normal’ happen in the firearm marketplace before it collapsed on itself. With prices coming down, availability up & ammo supplies increasing more people are being drawn into firearm ownership that otherwise would have stayed out. In the long run it should be better for all concerned. It seems that under Trump the firearms community is only going to grow.

      • I’ll tell you what could grow if the 2017 President and Congress pass the Hearing Protection Act: backyard shooting ranges and a LOT more people joining the fold of firearms ownership.

        If I am able to purchase two or three inexpensive suppressors (two or three to cover multiple caliber options), I WILL build a modest and safe shooting range in my back yard for plinking. The only reason I don’t plink in my backyard right now is because the noise would seriously alarm as well as aggravate the neighbors. With a couple decent suppressors, I could plink to my heart’s content without disturbing the peace.

        I think that will encourage more shooting and get more people involved. It would be much easier and much more friendly to introduce someone to shooting in your back yard rather than driving to a range, being pressed for time, and being unable to hear each other talk (and teach) over the shooting in the other lanes.

        • I have a backyard range where we even shoot some fairly big stuff & so do quite a few neighbors. Without exaggeration, you hear gun fire 7 days a week in a very large area; some of it sounds full auto, but maybe just a bump stock.

  8. The HPA would be a big boon to the firearms industry. Can you imagine how many new barrels and supressors would be sold? I would want one for every single firearm except my daily carry.

    • I really think that the Trump admin will eventually lead to an even larger firearms industry. Can’t wait for the ‘Golden Child’ that was really a turd painted gold to be gone.

  9. Last weekend, gun show in town, attendance way down from prior years. The prices on more than half the guns were higher than in local stores, which is puzzling. Ammo prices at the gun show were sky-high, mostly for very old third-rate target ammo.. at local stores, the price cuts since the election sometimes exceed 30%. I will be in full buy-mode this spring: I want a nice AR-10 battle rifle in .308 soon!

  10. “For most of Obama’s administration he faced a hostile Congress, making it very difficult for him to pursue his agenda [on gun policy]. Trump has the majority in both houses and will have the Supreme Court. Democrats have very little to say about it at this point.”

    **CORRECTION**

    Democrats have all too much to say about it, but no one is listening. They will turn from the uninterested public to the only winning strategy they have left, buying gun control laws at the state level. The fake news presstitutes will continue spinning their bunk at high speeds every time a person sees a gun, much less is hurt with one.

    The Right needs to take a page out of the Left’s playbook, start crafting suites of legislation, 10 to 20 bills together ala Gunmaggedon here in Cali, except they would be gun RIGHTS bills, and jam those down the throats of the left.

  11. “For most of Obama’s administration he faced a hostile Congress,”
    And Trump doesn’t? Has the entire campaign been forgotten already? He faces almost as much opposition from the Rs as the Ds. Hell, his own cabinet posts have called him almost every name in the book.

  12. There’s an idea for a constitutional amendment that would help us immensely. It’s been called the “Presumption of Liberty” amendment, and it would basically state that whichever law guaranteed more individual liberty would prevail, whether state or federal. It’s a sort of preemption, but preemption by the principle of liberty. The more robust version would apply to the courts as well, requiring courts to always make the choice that best strengthens or extends individual liberty.

    The POTG should start fighting to get such an amendment passed. Otherwise whatever gains we make in liberty can just be legislated back.

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