.png)
Category: Gun Fearing Wussies
Proposed Pennsylvania House Bill 586, introduced on March 20, 2023, proposes significant changes to ammunition regulations that would impact law-abiding gun owners in the state. The bill, which was introduced by 12 state Democrats, including prime sponsor Representative Stephen Kinsey, seeks to give the Commissioner of Pennsylvania State Police and the Secretary of Revenue the power to enforce the new rules and collect a tax on ammunition to fund the changes.
Encoded Ammo Database, Pennsylvania House Bill 586
The bill would create an “encoded ammunition database,” which would contain comprehensive records of all ammunition sold or purchased, including details from the manufacturer, seller, and purchaser. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade organization for the shooting sports industry, has raised concerns about exactly this type of database in a recent Bullet Serialization Fact Sheet [embeded below], noting that it could have negative implications for public safety and law enforcement.
The bill has several provisions, including a requirement that all ammunition sold in Pennsylvania must be encoded with multiple serial numbers. This means that a manufacturer must add individual serial numbers to all ammunition provided for retail sale in a manner yet to be established by the Pennsylvania State Police commissioner. Each bullet would have a unique serial number located at its base, inside the cartridge casing, and outside the box of ammunition.
In a related article that alerted us to this crazy bill, Riley Bowman, Vice President of ConcealedCarry.com pointed out that this could pose significant challenges for producers and negatively impact ammunition produced for law enforcement, even though they are exempt from this bill. He noted that ammo producers are already struggling to keep up with demand, and the time required to produce a single round of ammunition could increase from seconds to minutes.
The bill also requires anyone who possesses non-encoded ammunition to dispose of it by January 1, 2024. Is what they are proposing that millions and millions of rounds of ammunition be shot in less than a year by Pennsylvania gun owners?
Reloading Ammo Would Be Dead
It fails to mention how this would impact hand-loaded ammunition. How would hobby reloaders even accomplish the serialization and eventual reporting of that data to the state? The bill ignores other issues, such as recycled brass or collected casings.
Manufacturing & Purchasing Headaches
Additionally, all ammunition manufacturers would be required to provide their name and address, the serial numbers found on every bullet, casing, and box, and any other information that the commissioner deems necessary. The purchaser would be required to provide detailed personal information to the seller, including the date of purchase, the purchaser’s name, date of birth, driver’s license number, or other number issued by the federal government or state of Pennsylvania, and the serial numbers of all ammunition bought by the purchaser. The retailer would then be required to provide this information to the commissioner for the encoded ammunition database and maintain a copy of all records submitted for at least three years.
5 Cents Per Round Tax!?
The Firearms Policy Coalition called it Ammunition Registration. FPC noted that: “… the bill requires that a “tax of five cents per round of ammunition …imposed on the sale at retail or use of encoded ammunition in this Commonwealth.” What’s the tax for, you ask? Believe it or not, that money would go towards funding a police-run ammunition database. FPC sees this for what it is.”
The bill outlines punishments for potential violators, including a misdemeanor charge for sellers who do not provide the required information and a misdemeanor charge for individuals who intentionally destroy or render unreadable the encoded information on ammunition. Manufacturers who violate the bill’s provisions would be subject to a civil fine imposed by the commissioner.
While the bill’s proponents claim that it would help law enforcement, opponents argue that it would hurt their ability to obtain ammunition for defensive use and training. It could also negatively affect law enforcement officer performance and safety.
The bill poses a significant threat to the right to keep and bear arms in Pennsylvania. The cost of producing serialized ammunition using unproven technology is guaranteed to raise the price of ammunition far above what most people can afford. This could fundamentally strip away the right to self-defense from everyone except for the most wealthy among us.
Nationally, ammunition serialization has received a lot of attention in the past, with versions of the “Ammunition Accountability Act” appearing in 18 state legislatures in 2008. However, none of these bills passed.
Pennsylvania House Bill 586 proposes significant changes to ammunition regulations that will negatively impact law-abiding gun owners in the state. The bill’s provisions, including the requirement for serialized ammunition, the creation of an encoded ammunition database, and increased responsibilities and punishments for manufacturers, sellers, and purchasers, will lead to increased costs, decreased availability of ammunition, and potential legal consequences for innocent individuals.
The bill’s supporters and sponsors argue that it would make it easier to track down criminals and prevent them from obtaining ammunition. Still, gun owners know the real purpose behind this legislative nightmare is to add additional burdens on lawful gun owners while failing to address actual ways of reducing crime rates. As the bill moves through the legislative process, it is likely to face significant debate and scrutiny from both sides of the political spectrum. Ultimately, it will be up to you to let your Pennsylvania lawmakers know how you feel about ammunition registration, so act now.
Bullet Serialization Fact Sheet ~ National Shooting Sports Foundation
“If it saves one life, then we should give up another one of our few remaining rights!” Chorus and repeat!
Categories
Why indeed?
The mainstream media is like a dog chasing a squirrel. Talking heads pontificate about the crisis du jour, while public figures rend their clothes while wearing sackcloth and ashes before the klieg lights and cameras. There is something fresh, new, and horrible every single day. It is predictable. That’s a great way to earn clicks but a really bad way to shape government policy.
According to them, our country’s greatest existential crisis is assault weapons. Now we all know that it’s not even possible to define a “semiautomatic assault weapon,” much less control its proliferation and nefarious use via legislative fiat. However, reality has never stopped the Left from throwing ineffective laws at a problem. As it relates to the Second Amendment in general and an assault weapons ban in particular, it behooves us to appreciate a few inconvenient facts.
Everytown for Gun Safety is a rabidly anti-gun political activist organization. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their numbers are accurate. Everytown defines a mass shooting as a rampage event wherein four or more people are killed with firearms excluding the shooter. They counted an average of nineteen mass shooter events per annum between 2009 and 2020, with a total of 1,363 fatalities. Of these tragedies spread over 12 years, firearms that could be defined as “assault weapons” were used in 30 shootings, resulting in 347 deaths.
Gun banners would have you believe that this is responsible for the
deaths of thousands of innocent Americans. That’s just not true.
Ours is a nation of 328 million people. In 2019, 364 Americans were killed with rifles of all sorts. That’s 364 unimaginable tragedies. I do not for a moment trivialize that. However, there is the issue of scale.
In that same year, we lost 480,000 Americans to cigarettes. Of those 480,000, some 41,000 were innocent non-smokers killed by secondhand smoke, mostly children with breathing disorders. That same year, 1,476 Americans were killed with knives, 600 were beaten to death with fists, and 397 died from attackers wielding clubs and hammers (statista.com). More people were murdered with knives in that single year than were killed in mass shootings between 2009 and 2020. People are just bad.
The images are undeniably heartrending. No normal person can gaze upon the pictures of terrified survivors streaming out of a school or shopping center without being viscerally moved. However, isolated images are no basis for sound policy.
As horrible as these diabolical events are in the grand scheme, the cold absolute numbers are still fairly small. By contrast, there is a flip side to the Second Amendment question that is typically completely overlooked in the national discourse. Just how many lives are saved by America’s unique infatuation with these implements of violence?
Lots more folks are hurt by thugs wielding unimposing handguns than black rifles.
Gunfacts.info estimates that guns are used to prevent crimes some 2.5 million times per year in America. That’s an average of 6,849 incidents every day. The same researchers assert that guns are used to avert a life-threatening crime 400,000 times per year. These numbers are amply footnoted, but statistics are readily manipulatable. I take all those things with a grain of salt. Today, I’d like to think a little bigger.
Our great republic has served as a beacon of freedom and democracy to an oft-enslaved world for some 245 years now. Ours is the most resilient, long-lived, and productive democracy in human history. We are also a gleaming exception. Time after time after time, governments have their day in the sun but then devolve into blood-soaked despotism. That cycle is a lamentable part of the human condition.
Cambodia suffered unimaginably under Pol Pot (2 million dead). Germany had Hitler and the Nazis (21 million dead). China had Mao (45 million dead). And then there’s Putin (pushing half a million dead total).
The real body counts don’t come from mass shooters. The serious body counts come from governments. And the only thing standing between the United States government and something similarly ghastly, as has been the case with democracies throughout human history, is a well-armed populace.
If you really want to make a dent in violence then figure out a way to
control the proliferation of these things. Knives are used to kill way more
people in America than scary black rifles.
An armed population is absolutely ungovernable without their consent. Those great wise old guys who drafted the U.S. Constitution knew that to be the case. That’s why the right to own a weapon was enshrined right behind the right to gripe about the government and attend the church of your choice.
I have a dear friend who is alive today because he had a gun on a remote deserted road late at night. The cops were never notified, and the incident never made it into any statistical database. However, I’m sure glad he traveled with a weapon. It’s a scary world.
The American phenomenon is unique in human history. The unhinged rantings of revisionist activists notwithstanding, we have been the greatest force for liberty in the history of the planet. And that could all be gone in a generation. We are not fundamentally different from the Germans, the Cambodians, the Russians, and the Chinese. We simply can’t let short-sighted witless agendas undo two centuries of profound, timeless wisdom.
I’ve only been up for a couple of hours (as I begin typing), and the news is already full of stupidity that I’ll need to address. I’ll lead off with a case challenging Washington, DC’s “large capacity” magazine ban, Hanson v. DC. The judge, one Rudolph Contreras, denied a preliminary injunction against the ban. His… reasoning is… remarkable. Or something; I’m trying to be somewhat polite.
A weapon may have some useful purposes in both civilian and military contexts, but if it is most useful in military service, it is not protected by the Second Amendment.
[…]
[Large capacity magazines] are not covered by the [2A] because they are most useful in military service.
Oddly, Contreras cites HELLER in making that point. I can’t find that argument in HELLER, which was largely about whether non- military weapons could be regulated, and how, but there is this.
It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M–16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.
Rather the opposite of Contreras’ weasel-wording, eh? Indeed, HELLER even cites the earlier MILLER, which establishes that militarily-useful arms are protected by the Second Amendment.
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.
Having chucked decades of SCOTUS precedent already, Contreras proceeds to demonstrate an amazing lack of judicial awareness of current events and Supreme Court decisions. Now that he’s established in his own deluded mind that standard capacity magazines are not 2A-protected, he addresses whether this particular restriction of such magazines is permissable.
WARNING: If you’re drinking, swallow before proceeding, for the protection of your screen.
Under this “two-step approach,” a court must “ask first whether a particular provision impinges upon a right protected by the Second Amendment; if it does, then . . . go on to determine whether the provision passes muster under the appropriate level of constitutional scrutiny.
Umm… BRUEN, moron. (All right; “somewhat polite” is off the table after all.) Associate Justice Thomas spent a fair amount of ink taking lower courts to task for continuing to use the two-step approach.
The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broad y consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Heller’s methodology centered on constitutional text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny.</b
[…]
To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest.
[…]
The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
HELLER rejected two-step government interest scrutiny.
MCDONALD rejected two-step government interest scrutiny.
BRUEN rejected two-step government interest scrutiny, and bitch-slapped lower courts for continuing to use it in direct defiance of the Supreme Court.
At this point, I wouldn’t blame Clarence Thomas if he is looking for a 2X4 and Contreras’ home address.
1 of 7
BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — A ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles cleared the Washington state Legislature on Wednesday and the governor is expected to sign it into law.
The high-powered firearms — once banned nationwide — are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for most of the country’s devastating mass shootings.
The ban comes after multiple failed attempts in the state’s Legislature, and amid the most mass shootings during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009.
The Washington law would block the sale, distribution, manufacture and importation of more than 50 gun models, including AR-15s, AK-47s and similar style rifles. These guns fire one bullet per trigger pull and automatically reload for a subsequent shot. Some exemptions are included for sales to law enforcement agencies and the military in Washington. The measure does not bar the possession of the weapons by people who already have them.
The law would go into effect immediately once it’s signed by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who has long advocated for such a ban. When the bill passed the state House in March, Inslee said he’s believed it since 1994 when, as a member of the U.S. Congress, he voted to make the ban a federal law.
After the bill passed, Inslee said the state of Washington “will not accept gun violence as normal.”
Inslee said lives will be saved because of the semi-automatic rifle ban and two other measures approved by the Legislature this session: one that introduced a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases and another to hold gunmakers liable for negligent sales.
Republican state lawmakers opposed the ban, with some contending school shootings should be addressed by remodeling buildings to make them less appealing as targets and others saying it infringes on people’s rights to defend themselves.
“HB 1240 clearly violates our state and federal constitutions, which is why it will end up in court immediately,” Sen. Lynda Wilson of Vancouver said.
The U.S. Congress reinstating a ban on semi-automatic rifles appears far off. But President Joe Biden and other Democrats have become increasingly emboldened in pushing for stronger gun controls — and doing so with no clear electoral consequences.
Nine states including California, New York and Massachusetts, along with the District of Columbia, have already passed similar bans, and the laws have been upheld as constitutional by the courts, according to Washington’s Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
In Colorado, lawmakers debated on Wednesday about similar gun measures, but a sweeping ban on semi-automatic firearms faces stiffer odds.
Lawmakers in the Texas Capitol set aside a slate of proposed new gun restrictions without a vote after hours of emotional appeals from Uvalde families whose children were killed last year. The hearing didn’t end until the early morning hours Wednesday.
During debate on the Washington state bill, Democrats spoke of frequent mass shootings that have killed people in churches, nightclubs, grocery stores and schools.
Sen. Liz Lovelett of Anacortes said that kids’ concerns about school shootings need to be addressed.
“They are marching in the streets. They are asking for us to take action,” Lovelett said. “We have to be able to give our kids reasons to feel hopeful.”
Another gun-control bill that passed in Washington this session would allow people whose family members die from gun violence to sue if a manufacturer or seller “is irresponsible in how they handle, store or sell those weapons.” Under the state’s consumer-protection act, the attorney general could file a lawsuit against manufacturers or sellers for negligently allowing their guns to be sold to minors, or to people buying guns legally in order to sell them to someone who can’t lawfully have them.
A second bill would require gun buyers to show they’ve taken safety training. It would also impose a 10-day waiting period for all gun purchases — something that’s already mandatory in Washington when buying a semi-automatic rifle.
Some gun-control legislation in other states has been struck down since last year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws. The ruling says the government must justify gun control laws by showing they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
What I think is that only the lawyers will win out of this! 
California gun owners recently won a significant victory from a federal court
judge who declared major parts of the state’s “Unsafe Handgun Act”
unconstitutional because it doesn’t allow newer pistols to be sold in
the state. Don’t party too hardy, as this was likely just the first round.
If you’ve never bought a handgun in California, good for you because the state law has been a train wreck, at least until recently when a federal judge struck down provisions in the law he found unconstitutional.
In the process, Judge Cormac J. Carney granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs but granted a 14-day grace period during which the state could appeal the ruling. By the time you read this, the appeal should be in the works.
But Judge Carney’s 22-page ruling contained some gems, and he was blunt about the problems with a handgun “roster” law that has plagued Golden State gun owners for years. As any California can attest, the law has prevented new pistols from being marketed in the state unless they meet some strict standards which, upon reflection, seem deliberately engineered to keep new handgun models out, and perhaps ultimately eliminate handguns altogether.
Hang on while we take you through the word salad of California’s handgun ownership (prevention) law. “UHA” refers to the state law, known as the “Unsafe Handgun Act.” “CLI” refers to “chamber loaded indicator.” And, finally, MDM refers to “magazine disconnect mechanism.” Got it? Good, because here’s a bit of Judge Carney’s wisdom:
“Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves,” Judge Carney observed. “They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the UHA’s CLI, MDM, and microstamping requirements do exactly that.
“California’s Unsafe Handgun Act (the “UHA”) seeks to prevent accidental discharges by requiring handguns to have particular safety features,” the judge acknowledged. “First, the UHA requires certain handguns to have a chamber load indicator (“CLI”), which is a device that indicates whether a handgun is loaded.
“Second,” he explained, “the UHA requires certain handguns to have a magazine disconnect mechanism (“MDM”), which prevents a handgun from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted.
“Third,” Judge Carney concluded, “the UHA requires certain handguns to have the ability to transfer microscopic characters representing the handgun’s make, model, and serial number onto shell casings when the handgun is fired, commonly referred to as microstamping capability. No handgun available in the world has all three of these features.” Right, we’re talking about “microstamping,” and as noted by the judge, “The microstamping requirement has prevented any new handgun models from being added to the Roster since May 2013.”
Who Is Judge Carney?
Cormac Joseph Carney was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California until he stepped down in 2020 over an incident involving alleged insensitive remarks to Kiry Gray, clerk of the Court.
He was born in Detroit in 1959, but was raised in Long Beach, Calif., graduating from high school there and going on to UCLA, where he played wide receiver for the Bruins football team. He practiced law in Los Angeles and was appointed to the California Superior Court. From there, he was nominated to the federal district court by former President George W. Bush and was confirmed by the Senate in April 2003.
He and his wife have three children, according to an online biography.
Enter the Double Standard
If it weren’t for double standards, California anti-gunners would have no standards at all.
To the point: In Judge Carney’s ruling, he notes, “The UHA’s prohibition on sales of ‘unsafe’ handguns is subject to exceptions as well. It does not apply to sales to law enforcement personnel, personnel from agencies including the California Highway Patrol, the Department of Justice, the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency, and the district attorney’s office, or any member of the military.”
He later adds, “if Off-Roster firearms were truly unsafe, California would not allow law enforcement to use them in the line of duty, when the stakes are highest. But the substantial majority of California’s law enforcement officers use Off-Roster handguns in the line of duty.”
And he points to another inconsistency in California bureaucratic reasoning when he notes, “The government argues that the balance of the equities weighs in its favor because an injunction would ‘permit unsafe handguns to be sold in California prior to trial, creating public safety risks.’
But the government’s safety concern rings hollow. Every single semiautomatic handgun available for sale in California at this time is a grandfathered handgun—one the government ostensibly considers ‘unsafe.’ 800 of 832 handguns on the Roster today lack CLI and MDM features. The government cannot credibly argue that handguns without CLI, MDM, and microstamping features pose unacceptable public safety risks when virtually all of the handguns available on the Roster and sold in California today lack those features.”
Can you say “oops?”
California attorney Chuck Michel is also president of the California
Rifle & Pistol Association. (Image courtesy Chuck Michel
Wise Counsel
Enter Chuck Michel, a California attorney with years of experience dealing with, and challenging, state gun control laws. With all the laws facing gun owners, Michel has had lots of practice.
The day Judge Carney handed down his ruling, I traded email with Michel, who also happens to be president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case. His summation of the ruling was unsympathetic to the state.
“For decades this ‘roster’ law has deprived law-abiding citizens of the right to choose a handgun appropriate for their individual needs,” he observed about the Carney ruling. “The loaded chamber indicator, magazine disconnect, and microstamping requirements were impossible to satisfy, so the number of different models of approved handguns available to buy dropped to barely 200.
“And,” he added, “that’s how the politicians who would love to ban handguns entirely wanted it. If we can hold on to this great Second Amendment win, people will be able to choose from among thousands of the latest, greatest, and safest handguns made today.”
I’ve known Michel for about 20 years, and he earned this win, along with every Californian who has ever been victimized by the state handgun laws. Hopefully, the good guys will prevail.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb wants Republicans to block funding for the ATF until Democrats and Biden administration bureaucrats show some respect for the Second Amendment.
CCRKBA Says Unfund ATF
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms recently did something to raise eyebrows. The group called on congressional Republicans to block funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
There’s a condition, of course. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said money should be held up “until Democrats and federal bureaucrats publicly recognize Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and stop their attacks on legal gun ownership.”
“We’ve seen attacks on Second Amendment rights under previous Democrat presidents,” Gottlieb said in a news release, “but the Biden administration has pulled out all the stops. Joe Biden has publicly declared his desire to ban modern semiautomatic rifles and 9mm pistols, the most popular firearms in the nation.
Millions of honest citizens own semiautomatic rifles for all kinds of uses, including home defense, competition, predator control, recreational shooting and hunting, and they have never harmed anyone. Likewise, millions of men and women own and use 9mm pistols for personal and home protection, training, target shooting, competition, business protection, and other legitimate uses.
“But under Joe Biden,” he continued, “the ATF has been weaponized against law-abiding citizens, and his budget proposal includes $1.9 billion for the agency to expand operations and increase regulation of the firearms industry.
“Clearly,” Gottlieb said, “Biden and the Democrats have decided that American gun owners are their enemy.”
From the CCRKBA . . .
Democrats in the Washington State Legislature put politics ahead of constitutional rights Saturday when they voted 27-21 to approve House Bill 1240, which bans the future sale, manufacture and importation of so-called “assault weapons,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
“Contrary to Democrats in Olympia, who sound like they’re reading from the same script, modern semiautomatic firearms are not ‘weapons of war’,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This ban will not improve public safety, as proponents such as Attorney General Bob Ferguson have asserted. It will only impair the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing absolutely nothing to prevent criminals from committing murder and mayhem, and they know it.”
The legislation, which goes back to the House for concurrence, does not ban possession of semiautomatic rifles, shotguns or handguns by people who already own them.
“One or more lawsuits challenging this legislation will almost certainly be filed within days, if not hours, of Gov. Jay Inslee’s signing,” Gottlieb predicted. “Ultimately, we expect this law to be nullified by the courts as a violation of the Second Amendment and Washington State’s constitution. In the meantime, of course, Evergreen State gun owners will continue to be treated like second-class citizens by the self-righteous zealots behind the ban, while the criminal element will remain undeterred and unencumbered.
“Proponents of this legislation have touted the results of a poll done last year by the Northwest Progressive Institute showing that 56 percent of Washington voters support a ban,” he continued. “What they overlook is that constitutional rights are not subject to popularity polls, a fact we expect the courts to remind them about in the days ahead.
“The truly sad part about this is that people who have been gulled into believing a gun ban will have any major impact on violent crime are going to find out the hard way they were misled by the gun prohibition lobby,” Gottlieb observed. “All this accomplishes is that it gives anti-gunners an excuse to celebrate at the expense of law-abiding Washington citizens who have committed no crime, and whose only sin is that they choose to exercise a constitutionally protected right. Where’s the justice, or even the logic, in that?”