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Dr Linda Shelton (courtesy twitter.com)

Let’s be clear: the fight for firearms freedom will never be won. There will always be statists attempting to eliminate American’s natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Gun rights advocates must work to retain their rights forevermore. Not to mention continuing the battle to roll back the blanket thrown over gun rights in states like New Jersey and Hawaii. But it’s certainly true that the anti-gun agitprop campaigners are making increasingly idiotic arguments. Case in point: our previous post AZ Central on Decapitation Killer: What If He’d Had A Gun? And this [via Dr Linda Shelton at dailykos.com] . . .

Americans own 50% of all civilian owned guns in the world. How could we possibly find, license, and control them at this point?

I believe the horse is out of the barn on this issue and there is almost no way to succeed in decreasing crime by controlling weapons, although I do believe we need to continue to try to license gun ownership and keep track of guns. We should move towards requiring a strict rule for manufacturers that they include in the weapon an embedded high tech chip to identify the original buyer.

A more practical manner of reducing gun deaths is strict bullet control at least as serious as with driver’s licenses. Licenses of several levels like level one for limited # bullets for a 22. To own high capacity clips or clips for guns with more than one bullet at a time must have advanced level bullet certificates for mental health and from police every two years. To own high caliber bullets or clips with more than a few bullets you would have to have training similar to an officer. Licensees would also have to keep records of their bullets like pharmacists do with narcotics. How many they have, who they give or sell them to, how they were used (target practice, etc).

This is not the first time the antis have made this “argument.” Most prominently, comedian Chris Rock offered this “solution” in his 1999 bullet control shtick. Not to mention Chicago’s and Providence’s unsuccessful attempts to tax bullets. And the recently abandoned ammunition registry mandate in New York’s ironically named Safe Act’s restrictions on internet-provided ammunition. But it is the first time I’ve seen a serious “regulate bullets” proposal by antis.

A quick aside . . .

Dr. Shelton’s article presents yet another assertion of the recently propagated myth that concealed carriers can’t cope with armed self-defense (.e.g., Washington Post: “Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense”). It’s enough to make you think these anti-gun memes are part of co-ordinated campaign.

Armed civilians do more harm than good. Studies have shown that practicing with a stationary target under calm conditions does not prepare you to duck, be aware of your surroundings and avoid tunnel vision of fight or flight situation where you fail to recognize innocent and shoot wildly, and without constant intense training, you do not have muscle memory to overcome the shakiness from stress hormones and fight or flight signals from nervous system removing blood from periphery and giving it to large muscles and center mass plus brain, as well as have the quickness and accuracy needed in a rapidly evolving active shooter situation with innocents running everywhere including in front of your gun. Armed civilians everywhere will cause more death and injury, not less.

Do these non-sensical posts indicate increasing desperation amongst the civilian disarmament industrial complex? Probably not. The antis have never been constrained by the boundaries of fact, logic or common sense – a term they misuse with Orwellian gusto. Still, their ridiculous rhetoric is interesting and, in a strange way, heartening.

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81 COMMENTS

  1. Not desparate, cause evil never dies, but there is a timing issue hinging on the next Presidential election. You can see it at the back end of every (D) prez term, as they were forced to be silent during the other portions of the term(s) and now they have to get what they can get.

    The Freaks come out at night – hold on to your hats, we have ~ 14 mos. of crazy-a_ _ -sh_t a comin.

    • Until gun-grabbing is labeled (openly, socially, shouted in the streets) as an attack on the Constitution, these a-holes will continue to feel they have a right to do it, and the push-back will be all one-sided (from ‘our’ side).

      Label all of these attacks as a “soft-Civil War”, a Constitutional Crisis [demanding proper support from the black-robed a-hole yahoos assigned to protect it], further, demand an accounting of these anti-gun people and groups. If they have taken even $0.01 in foreign money to support the overthrow of our Constitution THAT EQUALS SEDITION, AND FOREIGN SUPPORTED SEDITION IS TREASON.

    • 14 months from now is early October 2016, Obama leaves office 20 January 2017. So we have 17 and a half months to go, not 14

      • No, if it looks like it’s a replay of the evil blue house of (D) in October, with the election the following month. It will effectively be “over”. Either way, these groups will go back into hiding because no one spouting this crap will get elected.

    • and silence does not equal consent. Silence is, after all, what the firing squad gives you, before they give you an eternity of it. [TERMS, J.M. Thomas, R., 2012]

  2. Ummm…boo-lit control. Stock up POTG-barry soetoro IS going to pull some nasty shite in the next year earning his title “worst president ever”…at least I hope there is a next year…

  3. Of course they’re getting desperate. It’s what human do when they have troubled dealing with their emotions and fell their reality slipping away.

    Despite splashing around in the blood and tears of victims and the victims’ families, despite the huge bull horn advantage of the main stream quasi-statist media, despite the spin that 40 gun rights laws were defeated while many more passed, they haven’t moved the needle on millimeter in their direction.

    They blame the mythical gun lobby with its Medusa like powers as a rationalization and a long term vilification project. If they only understood that their argument is being cut off at the knees by their own statist plutocrats (urban city mayors) and their own identity politics (#blacklivesmatter, sanctuary cities, social justice warriors, etc.), maybe they could make some headway. But that would require hard introspection and that may disturb their feelings so it won’t happen. And I’m fine with that.

  4. Most disconcerting to me are the number of people who are totally unhinged, walking around in a cloud of mental illness…and I’m talking about the anti-gun zealots here–not the odd person who goes bonkers, chops up his family and then performs eye surgery on himself. That kind of thing is exceptionally rare. Psychopaths are totally outnumbered by progressives who are openly displaying all sorts of neuroses. THOSE are the people I’m keeping an eye on.

  5. “How could we possibly find, license, and control them at this point?”

    We are on a roll! In this one sentence this author has conceded the gun-grabber’s goal as futile. All it takes is for the uncommitted public to realize that America’s civilian gun inventory is long past the point of no-return and the rest of the arguments fall to pieces.

    Once the public grasps that guns are like cars: they are both dangerous and ubiquitous, we can then dispense with the idea that we can keep these tools of violence out of the hands of anyone.

    The only remaining “gun-control” measure with any potential for success is enforcing “felon-in-posession”; a law with which we PotG agree. (Our complaints are with the disabling criteria and the difficulty with getting one’s rights restored.)

    We ought to be touting that we agree with the gun-grabbers on this key point, and then invite the public to see where that conclusion leads us in the gun-control debate.

    • What do you mean “we”, gun control statist. I don’t agree with denying anyone, once they are out of prison, their right to KABA.

      The true unrepentant predator will simply ignore the law and those that want to be law abiding will do so by being designated as a second class sub human denied the ability to defend effectively their life, for the rest of thier life. A life time sentence as a sub human, despised by the criminal and the law abiding alike.

      If I was a felon and had that choice, I would choose to continue carrying a weapon, and if I got caught and ended back in jail oh well, at least I would be on an equal footing with the other inmates.

      • And even if there was a probationary period before getting their gun rights back, one day is one day too many to create a sub species of human being.

        “But what if they used a gun once they got out that same day to rob a store or kill some?” And the true predator is currently stopped from doing that now, how?

    • I think the best part of the whole article is that she realizes that it is futile to try to track, license, and/or control 300 million firearms in the US, but thinks its perfectly rational to do just that to TRILLIONS of rounds of ammunition. Moonbats…

      • Yeah, like Officer Friendly is going to count your stock of .22 and 9mm, one by one, to see if your records tally with your actual count.

    • @markpa
      “The only remaining “gun-control” measure with any potential for success is enforcing “felon-in-posession”; a law with which we PotG agree. (Our complaints are with the disabling criteria and the difficulty with getting one’s rights restored.)”

      I, as one of the WE, have to disagree with your passion in allowing the infringement on the rights of our fellow citizens. You must be a lawyer. If a criminal is not able to be trusted with personal responsibility, they shouldn’t be free.

      • “You must be a lawyer. If a criminal is not able to be trusted with personal responsibility, they shouldn’t be free.”

        No, I am not a lawyer.

        In principle, I find myself in agreement with the proposition that someone who can’t be trusted with a gun shouldn’t be at liberty without a custodian. Nevertheless, we have to deal with more than pure ivory-tower principle. This is real life and politics as well.

        We already have a higher percentage of our population behind bars than any other major country. We can edge this figure up gradually but we are probably approaching some politically-tolerable maximum. Our options for dealing with this statistic are somewhat limited. The major one is releasing all the drug convicts to double the room available for violent criminals. But, there is a large and powerful segment of the voters that are still fully engaged in the war on drugs.

        To keep all violent criminals behind bars until we are convinced they are trustworthy will be tantamount to giving them a life sentence. That too is politically unacceptable. America is a nation committed to the ideals of forgiveness and second-chances.

        As much as I’d like to find a solution that would keep violent criminals in prison for a very long time, I don’t see this happening in the foreseeable future. We will sooner get to the point where we have civilized the crime-committing segment of the population before we solve the problems of locking-up violent criminals until they become trustworthy.

        Let’s waive a magic wand and imagine that we’ve solved these problems. Convincing the voters that the problems are solved is a separate and difficult problem. Those that adhere to the principle of restoring 2A rights to all released felons have to convince the voters that this is a safe thing to do. That’s really a tough proposition.

        We have a tough enough time persuading the majority of voters that law-abiding citizens can be trusted to carry guns in public. While this struggle for hearts-and-minds has not yet been achieved, you would like the PotG to advocate arming released felons. This proposal strikes me as counter-productive to the RKBA cause.

        I think we do a far greater service to the cause of widespread exercise of RKBA by:
        – narrowing the grounds for disablement to violent crimes;
        – restoring funding to the programs for rehabilitating disabled persons’ 2A rights;
        – figuring out a more rational approach to those convicted of Domestic-Violence;
        – fixing the mental heath disabling criteria

        The foregoing are politically feasible. Rehabilitating felons’ 2A rights is not feasible. Keeping all felons locked-up until they can be deemed trustworthy is not feasible.

        What goals should we PotG be working toward? Those that seem politically feasible? Those that will be summarily dismissed by the overwhelming majority of voters?

  6. I believe the horse is out of the
    barn on this issue and there is
    almost no way to succeed in
    decreasing crime by controlling
    weapons,

    Swing…

    although I do believe
    we need to continue to try to license gun ownership and
    keep track of guns.

    And a miss.

  7. “Licensees would also have to keep records of their bullets like pharmacists do with narcotics.”

    Yes, because that process has been so effective at stopping the flow of narcotics. Do these people ever once stop to think about what they are saying before opening their mouths?

    This is obviously simply about harassing the legal gun owner and in particular the hobbyist, in an effort to oppose “gun culture”.

  8. “It’s enough to make you think these anti-gun memes are part of co-ordinated campaign.”

    Maybe Brietbart will discover and the “GunJornoPros”/Journo-List email list they are using to coordinate. We can hope, right?

  9. “high capacity CLIPS or clips for guns with more than ONE bullet at a time”

    “high caliber BULLETS”

    Well, I guess they’re not talking about ‘the thing that goes up’ anymore, but they still have no clue what in the hell they are talking about and therefore the only answer is:

    Screw you.

  10. Desperate for what . . .

    Seriously – an anti-gun group calls itself “moms demand action” and either do not see the double entendre or do and put it there on purpose. Yes, they are desperate for [insert crass phallic slang here]. Cuz the percentage of straight males amongst them is low and I highly suspect that the ones there are dudes just tryin to get laid.

    That face looks like one in need of [insert crass phallic slang here]. I cut her some slack because she is an M.D. not just a PhD. But seriously if she does not need an orgasm then I am thinking a shot of Jack and .50 BMG (not at here just her behind the trigger).

  11. I want to see more today about NRA backing increased background checks in news today.

    One bullet? Dr. Shelton needs to have HER head examined. It’s ALWAYS about restricting law-abiding people who factually do not cause trouble and NEVER about accepting and dealing with a widespread societal problem. Border control, immigration, trade, jobs, gangs, early conflict resolution teaching, how about the anti’s start using their supposed big brains in intelligent ways because so far no one is impressed.

  12. 01 SHELTON LINDA 000000 ACC05008701
    02 SHELTON LINDA 090255 ACC07005701
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    this about says it all …

    • This “doctor” is a criminal and nut job. She has done time for aggravated battery to a corrections officer and had to be carried forcibly out of court due to her persistent outbursts in court. The above background summarizes nicely what type of person this is. She’s probably mad because under the law she is unable to obtain a gun let alone ammunition.

      • Yep, this is the kind of crazy that I was talking about above. She is totally and completely unhinged. But don’t take my word for it; here’s what an appeals court had to say about the woman:

        To paraphrase Tolstoy, happy litigants are all alike, but every unhappy litigant is unhappy in her own way. Most litigants express displeasure with the legal process in exceedingly civil ways. They might complain in private to their lawyer, vent with their family, or take it out on some unsuspecting store clerk. Some flash occasional signs of anger that might seem unsettling. A few allow their temperament to become deranged enough to cause disturbances during court proceedings and wind up in our correctional institutions. In this appeal, we consider the rather strident and entirely misplaced arguments of a habitually contumacious physician whose obstreperous conduct while on trial for Medicaid vendor fraud justly earned her some Cook County jail time for direct criminal contempt. The events that led to her confinement and the tragicomic happenings while in jail will be punctiliously elucidated below; but in a nutshell, she chose to use some of her jail time to physically confront a supervisor in the facility, which led to an indictment for aggravated battery, for which she received a two-year sentence in the Department of Corrections.

        CONCLUSION

        Defendant seems to have mastered a wide-ranging system of wreaking havoc within our judicial system, and in this instance, she should have conclusively learned that the system is flexible but firm. Her method of expressing her displeasure with the trial court’s finding of contempt reflects a deep-seated and particularly malevolent mistrust of the judicial process. This is ironic, given that defendant seems to spend an inordinate amount of time in court. Despite defendant’s easily expressed contempt for all aspects of jurisprudence, it is our considered opinion that she was appropriately charged, evenly tried, and fairly sentenced for her illegal conduct while confined in jail.

        For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the judgment of the circuit court.

        Affirmed.

        Justice LAVIN delivered the opinion of the court:

        FITZGERALD SMITH and HOWSE, JJ., concur.
        http://caselaw.findlaw.com/il-court-of-appeals/1524427.html

        • Wow: That is the actual legal text. I thought you were just winging some elaborate sarcasm to indicate she was completely batshit.

        • Has someone informed DailyKos they are using a certified whack-job as an authority ? 🙂

        • Hmmm, so it appears the DailyKos article author is a sue-happy convicted felon. As well as a loon.
          Those attributes are perfect credentials for writing on that site, and of course that makes her uniquely expert in all gun control issues.

        • Post of the week, right here. Exposing in no uncertain terms the extent of this ‘doctor’s’ full-on nutbar ragesplosion.

          GG Sean!

    • Holy shit. Forget that whole argument about felons getting their rights restored- I’m starting to think the real ticket here is forcing journalists and op-ed writers to pass a 4473-type document without lying their asses off. Wowie.

  13. Question: Why is nobody countering these junk science studies with real world counters? IE; how many real world DGUs resulted in injured bystanders? How many times did a DGU fail the victim? Etc etc. We all know the data shows the reality that civilian DGUs are plentiful and overwhelmingly successful, that removing guns does not reduce violent crime (and my factor in it’s increase), and that violence, including that involving guns, is on a down trend despite the fact that there are even more guns in the US than ever before?
    The data is there, we need to use it far more often. Show how those who are for disarmament have no grounds in reality and data, show that they are pure emotion, show how the facts support the armed citizen. That is how we win victories.

    • “…Show how those who are for disarmament have no grounds in reality and data,”

      But we might get dailykos all over our shoes…. The wife isn’t going to like us leaving that kind of mess all through the house.

    • Money. We don’t have any nut case billionaires funding junk science; just Dr. John Lott and the Center for Crime Prevention (CRPC). But the antis say all of John Lott’s research is bogus because the Olin Foundation gave some money to the University of Chicago in 1953 for a fellowships. Lott left the Chicago in 1999. Olin Corporation was a chemical & munitions company. So so so! See! See! You all are just wrong because you don’t have any billionaires to buy fake research.

  14. Desperate for what . . .

    Seriously – an anti-gun group calls itself “moms demand action” and either do not see the double entendre or do and put it there on purpose. Yes, they are desperate for [insert crass phallic slang here]. Cuz the percentage of straight males amongst them is low and I highly suspect that the ones there are dudes just tryin to get laid.

    That face looks like one in need of [insert crass phallic slang here]. I cut her some slack because she is an M.D. not just a PhD. But seriously if she does not need an orgasm then I am thinking a shot of Jack and .50 BMG.

  15. “..The antis have never been constrained by the boundaries of fact, logic or common sense – a term they misuse with Orwellian gusto. Still, their ridiculous rhetoric is interesting and, in a strange way, heartening.”

    Heartening? No. Their unique brand of evil should always be looked down upon with disgust and loathing.

    Entertaining? Yes. Watching the rapid spin from admitting they can’t do what they want to do but gosh darnit they are going to do it anyway…. comedy gold.

    The one thing, well the one thing I am going to point out, is never ever underestimate your enemy. They may play the part of fools, but sometimes it is just an act and they are trying to play you.

  16. ‘Fail to recognize innocents and shoot wildly’
    Does sh mean like New York police?
    The ones she wants us to be trained like?
    I refuse to downgrade my training lady.
    Good grief

  17. I liked this line:
    “Armed civilians everywhere will cause more death and injury, not less.”
    Umm, armed civilians are running around everywhere already (millions of them in fact)–so the question is, HAVE these armed civilians caused more death and injury? Have they caused mayhem because they are not trained to deal with an active shooter situation as police (supposedly) are? I don’t think so, sports fans. Personally, I recall no instances where “untrained” civilians have panicked and “sprayed” bullets everywhere, leading to the injuries and deaths of innocent bystanders. But there are dozens of cases where the police have managed to miss their targets completely in a tense situation, harming bystanders. those nine shot in NY that one time are an immediate example, as are the two newspaper delivery persons shot at during the Dorner manhunt–and it was only by luck that others were not shot, given the number of houses and parked cars that were shot full of holes. And so forth and so on.

  18. “…in a rapidly evolving active shooter situation…”

    What the hell is it with people and this “active shooter” crap? Those kinds of events are exceedingly rare, but anti-gunners and people on our side alike seem obsessed with them. If I owned and carried a gun (alas, mine were all lost in a tragic boating fire), it would be because of the garden-variety criminals and shitheads that vastly outnumber the dozen or so “active shooter” psychos that pop up each year.

    Also, “high tech embedded chip”, as opposed to those low-tech microchips that are made out of mud and straw?

  19. In “The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions”, philosopher of science scholar Thomas Kuhn described the effects of “paradigm changes” wherein people, discovering that critical relationships had changed, were driven to acts of frenzy. Daily events underscore the value of private citizens arming themselves. Given what’s happening in our world, the gun controller canard that private citizens with guns represent a societal danger, is sadly being tested (and found lacking) in the most graphic way. Much to the increasing dismay and frustration of gun-controllers, armed private citizens successfully defend themselves against harm every day. That is a very hard fact to ignore. Given the current state of the world, it’s also something that is destined to become increasingly prominent. When The Rally Bad Thing happens it’s hard to argue that one “good guy with a gun” might have saved people’s lives. Gun-controllers’ arguments simply can’t compete against that.

    • You could just order one on-line and have it delivered to your door “mail-order” (if you don’t live in CT, NJ, NY or WA). Of course, it wouldn’t be one of those exceedingly dangerous “assault weapons” with a thing that goes up. It would only be a mere battle rifle.

  20. I made the mistake of clicking on that article and reading some of the comments. The ignorance is astoundingly painful. Now I’ve got to hit the range tonight and flush it out of my mind. It hurts!

  21. What this woman knows about guns could be inscribed on a finger nail. It appears anything that holds more than a single round is a “high capacity” firearm–meaning that even derringers will require a special license. All semi-auto handguns are verboten except for “special” people who pass her mandatory mental health exams, as are all rifles with a an external or detachable magazine. Somehow I don’t think she will be successful in mandating a return to single shot muzzle loaders. I think she knows not whereof she speaks.

  22. I like the “high tech chips” idea. Because I would NEVER buy a cheap microwave and toss my gun in for 30 seconds. I mean, I like my guns done well and all…

  23. Prove she has a Ph.D. or an MD. Sorta like Sharpton and Jackson calling themselves “Reverend”. Just saying

  24. I wonder if this

    “Licenses of several levels like level one for limited # bullets for a 22.”

    would help solve the the .22 lr shortage.

    • I wonder if the use of the octothorpe (#) instead of the word “number” indicates that the editor of Daily Kos doesn’t give a sh#t.

  25. Studies have shown that practicing with a stationary target under calm conditions does not prepare you to duck

    Studies have shown that any sentence that starts with “studies have shown” is a monumental pile of bullsh1t.

  26. Yep, they are getting more desperate. The reason behind the desperation is the same as that behind the desperation of the global warming eco-wackos. That reason is, Americans are waking up to the truth. Americans are waking up to the fact that we have not had a warming trend for the last 17 years, so the eco-wackos are in a panic to pass whatever they can now before they are found out. Likewise, the gun grabbers are being faced with new statistics that demonstrate that an armed society is a safer society. Once the general population becomes convinced, the gun grabbers will find it harder to convince people to pass anything.

    Yep, the liberals (and Socialists) are on the ropes in many area.s

  27. How about this mandatory Military service for every one over the age of 18. Satisfies the militia clause, satisfies the training clause. might even help some of the miscreants find a purpose in life. If nothing else it might limit the collateral damage by those other than officers

  28. This is hardly a new idea. As Stephen Halbrook pointed out in his essay, NAZI FIREARMS LAW AND THE DISARMING OF THE GERMAN JEW, The Weimar Republic in German enacted the Gesetz
    über Schußwaffen und Munition in 1928 which, among other things, required a license to manufacture, assemble, or repair firearms and ammunition, or even to reload cartridge. Acquisition of a firearm or ammunition required a Waffen oder Munitionserwerbscheins (license to obtain a weapon or ammunition) from the police. The requirement applied to both commercial sales and private transfers. More recently, the late Senator from New York, Walter Mondale, perennially introduced such legislation beginning in the seventies.

    This is like a recurring bad dream, a zombie that those opposed to personal freedom continually resurrect, always as a “first step” and always hoping that their last attempt will have been forgotten.

    • Now, there is a very interesting idea!

      How about we recommend a law requiring registration of gun owners, including a declaration of religious affiliation! Atheist, Polytheist, Jew, Christian, Muslim. That way, whoever emerges in control of the government monopoly on force can easily round-up “unreliable” persons and dis-arm them.

      Should we have to deal with Islamic terrorism on our shores the list of registered Muslim gun-owners would be really handy.

      Should the Islamic State have to deal with infidels they would want to start with atheists and polytheists before working their way through the People-of-the-Book.

      Just follow the game-plan of the Weimar Republic as it morphed into the Third Reich. Surely the elites who rule-over use would see the logic of this approach.

      Unfortunately, among the uncommitted there are probably too few students of history to remember how the Holocaust worked.

  29. Great. My 9th grade activist Liberal Arts teacher wants to preach to me her ideas on ‘common sense gun control’. Go back to knitting Mao Tse Tung quilts already Mrs Shelton.

      • I’m guessing that would fall under her category of ‘possessions’ – of which we should all try to imagine a world with none (while holding hands of course)

  30. Imagine the whaling and screaming if someone proposed the following excerpt adapted from the article:

    To own high capacity publishing venues or publishing venues with more than one article at a time must have advanced level publishing certificates for mental health and from police every two years. To own thick books or bookshelves with more than a few books you would have to have training similar to a librarian. Licensees would also have to keep records of their books like pharmacists do with narcotics. How many they have, who they give or sell them to, how they were used (journalism practice, etc).

    • Whaling? This just brought up a hilarious image for me of people so enraged about guns that they jump into boats to go kill themselves a white whale.

  31. To go back to the original question: Since their entire movement is based on feelings and irrationality, it’s kind of hard to say whether they are “getting desperate” or not. I kind of like to think they are, but truthfully, their “normal” discourse has that same tinge of mindless, out-of-control emotionalism that characterizes desperation in normal people. And they’ve been periodically dragging out that, “OK, we can’t control guns, let’s control ammunition” since I was in the sixth grade or so.

  32. From having been on top of RKBA issues for 20+ years now, I would say that yes, the anti’s are becoming more and more unhinged – or perhaps, the anti’s who are left in the debate are the most emotionally wrought.

    See, this battle has evolved and change in 20+ years. 20+ years ago, while the politicians and the anti-RKBA activist groups legislated and litigated, the real battle was being fought in the pages of legal journals and in courtrooms. The various media outlets had a plethora of “experts” on the law and Constitution to choose from to fill anti-gun articles, clear up to the former Chief Justice of the SCOTUS. The argument wasn’t “how many” guns could/should people own, where they could carry them, etc. The big argument was “is there any individual right to own guns at all?” and the anti’s waited with fevered anticipation for the one case that would say “there is no individual right” to open a floodgate of legislation that was already written and just waiting in desk drawers for “the case” that would enable them to slam through such legislation.

    The media didn’t need to give a soapbox to the highly emotional, or ill-informed. They had plenty of people with Very Important Credentials to fill up column-inches and TV airtime. And they did give airtime and column inches to these People With Very Important Credentials. Lots of it.

    But then this lawyer named Alan Gura got to work, and he won the individual rights case (Heller), and then he won the case for “incorporation” of the individual right down upon the states (McDonald).

    Point, set, match for the legal issue.

    With two important SCOTUS wins on our side now, quite a few of the voices the media used to turn to have gone off the topic. The issue of the constitutionality has been pretty much settled in our favor, so the people who used to hang their hopes on the collectivist interpretation are no longer so interested. The criminology of the issue is now also well settled. More guns has not resulted in more crime. The DOJ themselves said that the “assault weapon ban” of 1994 had no effect on crime rates. And in the CCW area, predictions of blood in the streets turned out to be hyperbolic nonsense. People who are honest about the stats would have to come up with a way of explaining a negative correlation, and that’s not an easy feat to pull off.

    But the media kept hope alive that a good tear-jerker of a story, an American Dunblane, would turn the tide. They got their wish in 2012 at Newtown, CT. They turned to their messiah, Mr. Obama, for action. Surely, now no one could say ‘no.’ The press “flooded the zone” and turned up the volume on calls for gun control to “11.”

    And President Obama delivered. Oh, he wore out the side trim on the bully pulpit. The press fawned over his every word. Op-Eds lectured and ridiculed RKBA people. Now, we were finally going to get action!

    Except that the gun lobby had gotten stronger since the last time the anti’s had hold of the levers of power – 5 million strong. Almost AARP strong. And now, we had new faces leading the charge in media appearances. Wayne LaPierre was still working the shoe leather in Congress, but the PR battle had new faces.

    President Obama tried… and failed. For the first time in his two administrations, he failed, utterly. Suddenly, disciples of The One discovered that there was something he could not do. And if he couldn’t enact gun control legislation, well then… we might be disappointed on The One’s promise to make the oceans stop rising.

    In the time elapsed since Newtown, we’re seeing changes at the state level that the anti’s find truly repulsive. Constitutional Carry legislation is popping up in one state after another, and passing in some of the states. More data is coming in all the time that confounds the anti’s. Public attitudes and polling are changing – even after the American Dunblane! Polling is not going their way. And women (!) are discovering and carrying guns. Skeet and trap shooting clubs are popping up, new shooting ranges/clubs are opening with a completely new look. And through it all, gun sales are brisk – like never before. The number of guns being sold in America today is nothing short of mind-boggling – even to those of us who already own safes full of guns.

    Yes, they’re getting desperate, and they will become more desperate. And with the more intellectual anti-RKBA people now off the field, you’re going to get to see the desperate, emotional people more and more. This is a deeply emotional issue for some of these people, especially some of the women in the anti-gun movement. I debated two women in California 20 years ago who, when confronted by all the facts, stats, laws, etc that I could marshal against them in a civil debate, broke down in tears. I was civil, polite, professionally dressed (in a suit with a necktie), took pains to smell and act nice… and yet I had two women opposite me in a public debate start crying. They were that emotionally invested in this.

    This sort of emotional investment won’t go away easily or quickly.

    • Excellent recap of the modern struggle for the RKBA.
      As the rump gun-grabbers become increasingly histrionic while the popularization of guns becomes increasingly conspicuous, the uncommitted voter will be drawn to the weight of our arguments. We can’t expect some decisive victory overnight; but, in the next 10 to 20 years I expect that the war will be won.

      • I wonder.

        My sense of things is we’re going to see a great splintering. We’re going to lose some places where gun rights are currently pretty good, but the population is majority anti-gun. The prime examples that come to mind for me are Washington and Oregon. Both of these states are dominated politically by the I-5 corridor cities, but in the past that was sufficiently counterbalanced by the rest of the state. Now those cities have grown to the point where they can push through whatever they want and there isn’t enough heft elsewhere to resist.

        Meanwhile, you have places such as Texas, which is moving towards greater gun freedom. I think these two trends will accelerate, and soon there will be very sharp divides between places where we will have lost ground and laws will be very restrictive, and places where we will have won, and gun laws will be very free.

  33. Why do gun owners fear the loss of their weapons? It’s never going to happen! There are over three million guns just in America, so we know they can’t get them. With the internet we can now program machines to fabricate a gun, without any knowledge of how it works. American gun manufacturers will never let Congress pas a law outlawing guns. All this talk is just poking at windmills, fantasies in small minds. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid, they need to keep the animosity flowing.

  34. “you would have to have training similar to an officer”
    “does not prepare you to duck, be aware of your surroundings and avoid tunnel vision of fight or flight situation where you fail to recognize innocent and shoot wildly, and without constant intense training, you do not have muscle memory to overcome the shakiness from stress hormones and fight or flight signals from nervous system removing blood from periphery and giving it to large muscles and center mass plus brain, as well as have the quickness and accuracy needed in a rapidly evolving active shooter situation with innocents running everywhere including in front of your gun.”

    I’m really curious and would like some answers from some police officers who may read this blog. My wife and I trained for almost three hours at an outdoor range last Saturday with scenarios from some of the police training programs including the very difficult US Marshals program from a previous article on this blog (that one is even hard with a competition gun). We dry fired on Sunday (with lots of movement). We live fired Monday night at an indoor range – in that case we stood mostly still and shot at a stationary target. We worked on accuracy and speed shooting. We practiced strong and weak hand only shooting on that night also. Dry fire Tuesday and tonight with movement. We’ll skip tomorrow night. We’ll dry fire Friday and compete on Saturday. I don’t even come in at the top half in these matches. There are some seriously great shooters out there.

    Police officers. Do you practice more than once a day or more than 5 times a week with 2 of them live fire, and 4 of them including movement and scenarios? How much do I need to practice or what am I missing to match your practice? How often are you required to qualify and how often are you required to train, live fire, dry fire, etc…? Why is that a constant concern for antis? Do they really believe this?

  35. So they admit it is impossible to regulate and control the hundreds of millions of serialized and at least partially tracked guns in circulation and their solution is to regulate and control hundreds of billions of “bullets” that are not serialized or tracked. Whoever suggests that is either a comedian or is in a state where pot is legal and they’re making up for lost (consumption) time.

  36. I say to these gun grabbers, go pound sand. Stalin does NOT have enough Organs (there aren’t enough agents to disarm everyone, and they know it). As long as we stay armed, there really isn’t a heck of a lot that those swine can really do about it. Look at all the places where this latest round of gun control is basically being ignored, even by a lot of law enforcement officers. A lot of what comes out of their mouths is bluster. They would love to disarm us all but they just can’t do it.

  37. So she wants to regulate ‘bullets’, but not ‘cartridges’? How about first learning the basics of that you propose to regulate?

    and this recordkeeping suggestion:
    “How many they have, who they give or sell them to, how they were used (target practice, etc).”

    “knocked off a liquor store”. The “how they were used “section will be complete fiction.

  38. Restricting people to one round at a time would make some really accurate shooters.

    Especially when the only way to get more is to train more. I mean, the Texas Tower Shooter was super ineffective with his bolt-action rifle and spectacular marksmanship.

    Personally, I’d rather the active shooter have a select-fire weapon and a lack of training, thanks.

  39. I have been a huge fan and advocate for the bullet control shtick for 45 years and practice it whenever possible, the bullets go precisely where I aim them.

  40. I love the part about using “high tech chips” to identify a gun owner. That is so impractical it made me laugh. What sci-fi fantasy is this person living in?

  41. If these old white people think I will stop fighting for my civil rights they had better think again. This is a never ending war.

  42. She’s pretty dumb. A chip in the gun? Yeah that wouldn’t be easy to break or hack or anything. Bullet control? You can find videos on YouTube to teach you how to make makeshift powder, primers and bullets. Real smart. This is obviously a woman who has no understanding of this topic and is trying to sound like an expert.

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