Gun Rights

Joe Biden has announced an attempt to crack down on “ghost guns”, kits which can be bought without a background check, from which a working gun can quickly be made, and which have been used in an escalating number of shootings.

In a release, the White House said 20,000 “unserialized, privately made firearms” were reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2021, a tenfold increase on 2016.

Biden and Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general, were also due on Monday to announce the nomination of Steve Dettelbach, US attorney in Ohio from 2009 to 2016, to lead the ATF.

A mass shooting that killed six people and injured 12 in Sacramento last weekend predictably provoked immediate agitation for stricter gun control, including policies that seem utterly irrelevant to the facts of the case. That’s a familiar pattern in the gun policy debate, which consists largely of reiterating previous proposals in response to mass shootings, regardless of whether those ideas have anything to do with the most recent example.

The Sacramento Bee described the weekend’s apparently gang-related violence, which began around 2 a.m. Sunday in a downtown area where nightclubs had just closed, as “the worst mass shooting in city history.” The Los Angeles Times says “the shooting was California’s single deadliest in 2022,” although “there have been worse in the last year.” While these incidents supposedly underline the need for gun control, they simultaneously cast doubt on that argument, since California already has the strictest gun laws in the country.

It turns out that there is a COVID-19 side effect that won’t hurt you. In fact, it may save your life.

Since the nation shut down in March 2020 as the coronavirus crisis hit, 10 states have cleared the way for citizens to carry handguns.

CNN is clearly excited to announce the release of a new study on gun death statistics from a medical journal covering trauma surgery and acute care. We’ve seen plenty of these studies before, but this one puts a couple of new spins on how the results are tabulated that are sure to be popular with the gun-grabbing crowd. One of these twists is found in the headline at CNN, where it is breathlessly announced that gun deaths have exceeded deaths from automobile accidents in the United States in the period from 2009 to 2018.

Gun owners in the US city of San Jose will soon be required to take out liability insurance against gun injuries or accidents if landmark legislation is given final approval.

It will be the first time anywhere in the US that people will be compelled to purchase coverage for their weapons.

The California town’s city council approved the measure on Tuesday.

But some gun owners argue it would violate their Second Amendment rights.

The decision must be ratified next month at its final reading but is expected to pass.

How many guns are smuggled from the U.S. across the Canadian border is anyone’s guess.

So says an internal memo on Nov. 10 from Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s department, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

They should make the guns show proof of vaccination at the border.

The Economist pointed to the growing diversity of gun owners in America and noted that it is “bad for gun-control advocates.”

According to The Economist, a study by of Northeastern University shows that of the millions of first time buyers between January 2019 and April 2021, “half were female, a fifth black and a fifth Hispanic.”

Some people move away from utopian thinking after being “mugged by reality.” The latest evidence of this can be seen in leftists belatedly embracing the right of self-defense amid spiking violent crime rates and a dipping police presence.

But for some truly committed ideologues, even experiencing a literal armed robbery fundamentally changes nothing. Instead, it reinforces their fantasies of “common sense” gun control that would counterintuitively stop criminals and (supposedly) make us all safer.

h/t YY

Alberta won’t sign on to any handgun ban options Ottawa may offer, and says it’s willing to take the fight to court if provincial firearms jurisdiction is disregarded.

The federal Liberal government planned to give municipalities the ability to implement a ban but has adjusted since the last election to focus on working with provinces.

Alberta’s United Conservative government has long opposed many of the firearm measures proposed by the federal government, saying banning handguns would disproportionately punish law abiding gun owners and fail to adequately tackle the illegal use of firearms.