Bob Owens

The saddest truth in politics is that people get the leaders they deserve

Grief-pimp Bloomberg exploits mother of murder victim for PR stunt; pushed against bill that might have saved her son.

Written By: Bob - May• 18•13

I have nothing but contempt for Michael Bloomberg, and stunts like this are just one reason why:

Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), the pro-gun control group backed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is hitting Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) with its newest ad, which features a mother of one of the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting victims.

In the 30-second spot, Caren Teves, whose son Alex was killed in the Aurora shooting, shares a letter she wrote to Flake asking him to support expanded background checks on gun buyers.

He wrote back and suggested he agreed with her on the need for background checks, but ultimately voted against the Toomey-Manchin bill that would have instated them, which failed in the Senate.

“The issue isn’t just background checks, it’s keeping your promise, and Senator Flake didn’t,” she says.

Bloomberg’s ad and Teaves statement are both direct and provable lies, documented for posterity by the Senate record.

Senator Flake is documented as having voted for the Grassley background check amendment, which increased funding for the FBI NICS background check system and was the only amendment that would have addressed the elephant in the room that Democrats seem to want to ignore, the truth that most mass shooters of recent times (Cho at Virginia Tech, Loughner in Arizona, Holmes in Colorado) were mentally ill people who made it through the existing background check system.

I want Michael Bloomberg to defend his decision to push against the only amendment offered that would have made it more difficult for these dangerously mentally ill people to buy guns. The Schumer-Toomey-Manchin (STM) bill authored by Bloomberg’s MAIG would not have stopped the killing of Mrs. Teaves child.

She needs get get her head out of her ass and thank Senator Flake for having the integrity to vote for the one amendment that would have likely saved the life of her son, an amendment Michael Bloomberg actively campaigned to kill.

Posted in Firearms, Politics , | 3 Comments »

Dimwitted microstamping law goes into effect in California

Written By: Bob - May• 18•13

Politicians love to pass laws they ascribe to theories, and a 2007 California demand to implement microstamping has finally cleared enough of the technological hurdles to be implemented… but to what end?

A hotly contested gun-control law that was passed in 2007 is finally ready to be implemented, Attorney General Kamala Harris said Friday: a requirement that every new semiautomatic handgun contain “micro-stamping” technology that would allow police to trace a weapon from cartridges found at a crime scene.

The law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made California the first state to require micro-stamping, which engraves the gun’s serial number on each cartridge. But the legislation specified that it would take effect only when the technology was available and all private patents had expired.

…Implementation of micro-stamping “moves California to the forefront of the nation in combatting gun crime,” said the law’s author, former Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, who attended the news conference and is running for city attorney.

C.D. Michel, the NRA’s West Coast regional attorney, had a much grimmer prediction.

“This is not going to help solve crimes,” he said. “It’s easily defeated, easily wears out and can be used to lead police down false alleys” if the serial numbers are altered.

Worse yet, Michel said, manufacturers will be unwilling to add this expensive feature to guns sold in a single state, and will instead keep manufacturing weapons for the other states, where demand already far exceeds supply. The effect, he said, would be a ban on new semiautomatic handguns in California, which the NRA will challenge in court.

Microstamping “works” by turning the firing pin into a stamp. When the hammer comes down and the firing pin moves forward, it imprints a serial number on the primer of the cartridge.

This is great… in theory.

In reality, firing pins are easily replaceable, inexpensive parts that can readily be swapped out by any end user in less than ten minutes by any career criminal. This microstamping also wears out quickly, or can be defeated with a file or a grinder in about 30 seconds.

In short, the technology is a gimmick. So why pass it?

Democrats will claim that “any little bit helps,” and we must concede that microstamping may work on some occasions, but they didn’t push microstamping to solve crimes.

California Democrats passed microstamping for the same reason they’ve passed every gun law: to increase the cost of firearms, hoping to force the economically disadvantaged out of the market. At it’s core, in every culture, the intent of gun control is to target minorities for disarmament in order to better control them.

To it’s heart, gun control is racist, designed to disarm minorities.

This law is is just one of many confirming that fact.

Posted in Firearms | 7 Comments »

Update on Cape Fear Arsenal

Written By: Bob - May• 17•13

I honestly didn’t think too much of it when I posted Governor Pat McCrory’s press release about the announcement of a new ammunition manufacturing company coming to North Carolina, but several of you focused like a laser on one part of the statement:

Governor Pat McCrory and North Carolina Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker announced today that Cape Fear Arsenal Inc. will locate a new manufacturing facility in Robeson County.  The company plans to create 150 jobs and invest more than $15.2 million over the next three years in Lumberton.

…

Cape Fear Arsenal is a privately-held corporation focusing on providing high quality ammunition products in the Southeast U.S. Its products will be primarily sold to law enforcement.  The company also anticipates bidding on contracts for the military and state agencies.

Several of you expressed concerns with this statement, and considering the (often well-founded) suspicions may of us have towards the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the current administration, I grasp precisely where you are coming from.

I tried to answer that concern based upon my own understanding in the comments, and feel they bear repeating:

I’d be willing to bet that this claimed focus on institutional sales is design to placate those funding a private business, to ensure that their investment is a sound one. That allowed, the number of government agencies and their ammo requirements are finite. Once the company reaches a certain level of production and market saturation, they will then obviously transition to the much larger customer base that is the general shooting public.

Learn to look beyond the required rhetoric, folks. This is a big win for all of us.

Any investor sinking $15.2 million into a new business wants as much of a “sure thing” as he can get. If at all possible, vendors love to set up a steady baseline stream of revenue from which they can generate cashflow to continue both current business (meet payroll, pay suppliers), and for new business development (selling you and I tons of shooty goodness). At this moment in history, with ammo being in such short supply that local law enforcement agencies are having to beg for ammo from the citizens they protect, it just makes sense to get long-term institutional commitments set up to make sure the business thrives. It’s setting deep roots for future growth.

What I can almost guarantee is happening is that Cafe Fear Arsenal is going to get as many law enforcement commitments (I’m guessing state and local agencies in the southeast; they won’t start out producing the volume to garner federal interest even if they wanted to) as they can, and once they have as much of this “easy money” set aside, they’ll quickly transition to the much larger commercial market of shooters like you and I, where the profit margins are higher and there is much less red tape involved in what should be simply sales.

Citizens shoot and stockpile a lot more ammunition than the government, and outside of the military, I would not be surprised if the the American public was 70%-80% of the ammo market. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of ammo flowing from CFA to distributors and retailers sooner, rather than later. It only makes business sense.

And then there is this hint about where they stand, shown on their web site.

Cape Fear Arsenal Logo

Cape Fear Arsenal Logo

I do not think it is an accident at all that Cape Fear Arsenal chose the iconic image of Acton Minuteman Issac Davis for their logo. That is a clear and purposeful statement from a company who is of us. They know what French’s iconic The Minuteman represents symbolically, and of the sacrifice of Isaac Davis himself.

Time will of course tell if my estimation is an accurate one, but I think they deserve to benefit of the doubt as newly-minted small business that will be catering to us.

Posted in Culture, Firearms , | 4 Comments »

Police State Boston excels at shooting unarmed suspects, innocent bystanders, each other

Written By: Bob - May• 16•13

We already know that terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was shot up by Boston’s finest as he cowered in a boat without a weapon. Now we have confirmation that the cops shot up the wrong vehicle (but couldn’t shoot straight enough to hit the innocent citizens) the police officer wounded and nearly killed in the shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers wasn’t shot by the poorly-equipped terrorists, but was instead blasted by other poorly-trained cops:

almost a month later, two police sources have shed new light on exactly what happened when police confronted the two suspects in Watertown during the early hours of April 19, triggering a gun battle unlike anything recently seen on the streets of an American city.

Among the new details from the two police sources:

– Police fired nearly 300 rounds of ammunition within five to 10 minutes as they confronted the suspects — 100 more than initially reported. And that included one round that nearly killed Massachusetts Transit Police Officer Richard Donohue. (Others bullets struck the Tsarnaev brothers, seriously injuring Dzhokhar and contributing to the death of Tamerlan.)

– Tamerlan was the only brother armed with a handgun. The only other weapons they had were the homemade explosives that police say the brothers tossed out of the hijacked vehicle, including a few that detonated.

– Police accidentally fired on an unoccupied black SUV during the mayhem. “In the chaos, an officer or trooper (or some combination of personnel) mistook it for one of the two suspect vehicles,” David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police told CNN.

Competence?

Not required.

Posted in Domestic Terrorism , | 15 Comments »

O’Malley signs gun ban. Maryland offically joins the slave states

Written By: Bob - May• 16•13

The illiberal fascists of the Democratic Party (and more than a few Republicans) keep hammering away at the liberties of the American people, and Maryland Democrat Governor Martin O’Malley has be proud to help strip away the rights of his citizens, signing into law another blatantly unconstitutional gun law:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley will sign into law one of the nation’s strictest gun-control measures Thursday, a major victory after months of contentious debate during this year’s legislative session.

But the signing of the law, which goes into effect Oct. 1, isn’t the end of the fight. A new battle begins to convince judges and voters that it was the right response to last year’s school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

The National Rifle Association on Wednesday renewed its promise to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law. It bans the sale of nearly all semi-automatic rifles, plus magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, and requires new gun buyers to submit digital fingerprints to state police.

Supporters won’t rest, either. With federal gun-control legislation stalled in Congress, they will go on the offensive in coming days with a television ad campaign designed to build public support for the new law.

Amusingly, included as a bit of interaction on the side of this article is an interactive poll. As of 9:50 AM, here are the results.

Picture 1

So much for gun laws having “popular support.” they are instead being rammed through by deep-pocketed progressive/statist foundations (Tides and Joyce Foundations, etc), radical leftist lawmakers intent on trading the people’s liberty for their personal power, and of course, like-minded figures in the media who are attempting to shape the narrative… obviously, without much in the way of influencing actual popular opinion.

The statists simply don’t get it, and don’t want to get it. To them, “liberty” is an outdated concept, and the Second Amendment is an obstacle to be overcome, not the codification of a pre-existing right to be jealously guarded by the people.

The militia, as defined by the Founders themselves and later codified by U.S. Code, are the people.

There are two classes of militia, the organized and unorganized militia. Organized militia have uniforms and units and formalized drills (State guard units, community militias, but NOT the National Guard, which is military), and the unorganized militia, which is essentially everyone who is legally, mentally, and physically capable of firing a gun over the age of 18.

As for “well-regulated,” the Founders and Courts (including in the Heller decision) agree that “well-regulated” means well-practiced and smoothly functioning, the way a well-regulated chronograph keeps time accurately. It has nothing to do with passing laws restricting rights, and only a fool would argue that the most brilliant minds this nation has ever know would write a self-conflicting sentence.

The 27 words of the Second Amendment convey the fact that the Founding Fathers, who had just waged war against a tyrannical government and those traitorous citizens that sucked at it’s teat, wanted Americans to always be well-armed and well trained with weapons of military utility in order to pose a credible threat to state and federal governments. This “right of rebellion” preexists our nation, and formed the moral justification for our Declaration of Independence.

It’s sad how many Americans think that the government “allows” them to have rights. We are growing several generations of good and obedient slaves. Our Founding Fathers would be embarrassed by most Americans.

Will you let them be embarrassed of you?

Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.

–John Adams. Letter to Abigail Adams (27 April 1777), published as Letter CXI in Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife (1841) edited by Charles Francis Adams.

Posted in Culture, Firearms | 13 Comments »
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