Grey Matters

Bowe Bergdhal, who sounds like he left his post and may have given aid and comfort to America’s enemies, has been released in exchange for five (5) Gitmo detainees. It sounds like we not only do negotiate with terrorists, we don’t even hide it any more.

Sarah Silverman (whom I normally like) and some friends did a parody video about the NRA starting a “Black NRA”, as if blacks are somehow excluded from the (presumably white) NRA.

See Hollywood’s racist “Black NRA” video

Silverman et al. clearly think “arming young black men” is a Bad Thing. Keeping black people from having arms to defend against the KKK and others who are afraid of blacks was the motivator for gun control at its outset. Not much has changed. Blacks are disproportionately victims of crime and the anti-gun leftists think that leaving them disarmed against those who would prey on them is a good idea. Idjits.

Here’s a response:

It has long been FedGov’s practice to harass those in the firearms industry to discourage people from taking part. Clinton put two thirds of Federal Firearms Licensed dealers out of business via regulatory means.

Now we have Operation Choke Point, designed to harass those providing service to firearms dealers, treating them as criminals, in order to discourage them from providing their services to firearms related businesses.
Dept. of “Justice” is pressuring banks to shut down accounts without pressing charges against firearms merchants or even establishing that the merchants have broken the law. It’s simply another case of federal agencies being used for political purposes.

<http://www.infowars.com/justice-dept-launches-covert-sanctions-against-gun-owners/>
“Federal law enforcers are targeting merchant categories like payday lenders, ammunition and tobacco sales, and telemarketers – but not merely by pursuing those merchants directly,” Jason Oxman, the CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, wrote on the subject. “Rather, Operation Choke Point is flooding payments companies that provide processing service to those industries with subpoenas, civil investigative demands, and other burdensome and costly legal demands.”
Oxman explained the superficial logic behind Operation Choke Point: by increasing the legal and compliance costs of serving “disfavored merchant categories,” financial institutions will “simply stop providing service to such merchants.”

IMHO, DOJ should be charged under RICO.

Rights are like muscles; if you don’t exercise them, they become weak and useless.

This was driven home to me in 1997 when my family visited Roswell, NM for the 50th anniversary of the UFO crash and coverup. One of the vendors of UFO/alien themed trinkets was a fellow who sold targets to sport shooters. He’d redone his bad-guy-behind-a-hostage, replacing the bad guy with an alien grey. (I bought some of these targets.)

As a vendor of targets, he normally wore his a Dirty Harry .44 magnum in a shoulder rig. He asked one of the Roswell PD officers if that would be okay and the officer indicated that it was perfectly legal. But the officer added that if this citizen, well within his rights, chose to do so, then every officer at the event would stop by, interrupting his business, to “check him out” to verify he’s a legal possessor and not a threat. In other words, harass him.

The vendor elected not to wear his gun. That’s when it occurred to me that by not wearing guns where and when we can, we are sending the wrong message. Absent positive role models of average citizens minding their own business, living their lives while wearing guns, we are left only with the TV/movie stereotype: anyone with a gun is suspect. Only Bad Guys (and cops) have guns.

If more people at the Roswell event had been sporting firearms, the police would not have time to harass them all.

If more people, generally, would carry a weapon when and where they could, eventually the general public would get used to it and have to admit that it’s no big deal—just people going about their business who happen to have a machine on their hip.

The incident shown here: is simply a symptom of the problem. People are being continually conditioned to believe that anyone with a gun is a threat. How can we fix this?

Instead of correcting this incorrect impression of gun owners, the emphasis of gun rights groups in recent years has been on “discreet” or concealed carry. While much progress has been made in securing the ability of people to practice this constitutionally-protected right, actual carry is still vilified.

Gun rights groups have been busy mollifying people instead of educating them.

You may disagree with the actions of Open Carry Texas but they were just exercising constitutionally-protected rights. No one should have the cops called on them for that. And they wouldn’t, if people were more accustomed to seeing armed citizens. The only way to get people over panicking when they see someone with a gun is to let them see lots of people with guns, and often.

For the next four days wifey and I are continuing the Defensive Handgun course that started today followed by the concealed weapon permit course at Front Sight, Nevada.

Today was their biggest day ever with over 600 students on sight, each one armed and carrying plenty of ammo. No one was shot. Anti-rights folk may find that surprising.

I have not been here since 2001. It has grown a lot since then.

Our class with 42 students was mostly uneventful. I say “mostly” because one woman, while on the firing line, when given the instruction to “unload”, started firing off her entire magazine.  We’d been using and following the “unload” command all day so she knew what it meant (remove your magazine, eject the round in the chamber then follow with visual and tactile checks to ensure all ammo was removed from your gun).

Brain fart, I guess. We all had a good laugh.