Gun Control

And progressive gun-control and soft-on-crime policies don’t help.

Arecent visit to a gun range with a good friend (an expert hunter and firearms enthusiast) demonstrated the importance of gun control.

Not the Democratic dream of disarming law-abiding Americans, but handling and firing guns safely and accurately — so important for gun owners or anyone pondering becoming one.

So many bitter clingers, as Obama would put it, were at the range practicing gun control. Like the two Chinese men, by appearances father and son, practicing with a 9 mm pistol. Ditto two Indian gentlemen.

“This is a big deal,” says Punchbowl, breathlessly.

Is it? A bill that’s going straight down the toilet in the Senate sounds like the opposite of a big deal to me.”

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen on Thursday didn’t simply shoot down New York’s onerous “good-cause requirement” in the gun permit application process. It set up similar laws in other states for likely revocation. One of those states is California, where they have their own requirement that applicants must show a “good cause” or “special need” before a carry permit is issued.

Policy used as a political wedge to punish “bad” gun owners and reward “good” anti-gun activists will merely divide us. Worse, it won’t work.

… Our firearm-related homicides have been increasing since 2013, according to Statistics Canada. However, it is the breakdown in ownership and use that reveals much of the nonsense in Liberal gun policy. Firearm-related violent crime is highest in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Territories. Rural men are far more likely to die by suicide than the Canadian average.

Our problems are growing, but rifles are almost as dangerous as handguns. Rural and small-town Canadians are far more likely to die by gun violence than people in large cities. Staring us in the face is the reality that most Canadian gun deaths are the product of social realities like family violence, despair and alcohol — not drug dealers.

Ban all guns is the message.

The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in support of the Second Amendment this week. Naturally, the backlash has been swift and brutal.

The court ruled 6-3 that New York’s restrictive concealed carry permit system was unconstitutional. Known as a “may issue” system, it essentially required New Yorkers to convince a government bureaucrat that they had “a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community” in order to carry a firearm outside the home.

The high court’s ruling declares this a violation of the Second Amendment and the 14th Amendment — a violation, given that these amendments establish a right to keep and bear (read: outside the home) arms in self-defense. New York’s subjective, restrictive system treated self-defense as a privilege, not a right, so the justices struck it down.

NBC and ABC on Thursday broke in with alarmed coverage of the 6-3 gun rights victory in the Supreme Court, worrying about whether the out of touch conservatives on the Court will get people killed.

A blockbuster extension of Heller and McDonald has tossed out state requirements to demonstrate a need to carry a firearm, and on the expected 6-3 split. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, holding that states demanding a special reason to grant access to the right to bear arms violates both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

A Utah man who says he wanted to prove that he shouldn’t be able to have a gun may get his wish now that he’s been charged with a felony.

Police in Tooele County, Utah say that 33-year-old Spenser Terrell Thomas was arrested on Saturday after pointing what appeared to be a firearm at a local police officer. Thomas was apparently riding an electric scooter down the road when he spotted the officer and approached him.