Snowflakes in Hell

I’ve been meaning to blog about Countertop’s post from a week ago:

I work with a woman who was abused by her fiance. He happens to be a cop, working here in DC for a federal police force. She left him, and has a temporary restraining order against him (which was issued by a Prince Georges, Maryland county court).

But the anti-gun folks say only the police should be armed, because, in their minds I guess, they are above the same human nature the rest of us are subjected to. Consider this:

Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general.

But they are also, you know, above the law when it comes to domestic violence issues:

Unfortunately, an early analysis of the effect of the Domestic Violence Gun Ban on police officers shows that law enforcement officers have been able to circumvent the ban and retain their weapons. A 1999 survey of the nation’s 100 largest police departments revealed that only six cities acted against officers because of the Domestic Violence Gun Ban and only eleven officers were affected. Part of the reason for the lack of enforcement is that police officers have their records expunged or plead to a charge other than domestic violence.

That being from the National Center For Women and Police. I’m principal, I’m against the Lautenberg restrictions, but I sure as shit think if they are on the book they should apply to the police equally. I don’t mean to malign all police officers, but it looks to me like this is a problem that people should be worried about.  I hope that everything turns out OK with Countertop’s coworker.

Winter has struck hard in Pennsylvania, with temperatures in the low 20s plus wind chills, which means it’s time to whip out my Russian Army Ushanka. I generally remove the stars from them because I have issues promoting a regime that murdered millions of people, but I will admit they are warm. I often get questioned about where I got the hat from, and I’m always tempted to say “I got this hat off a dead Russian major”, but I think only gun nuts raised in the 80s would get the reference.

Over at WarOnGuns, David Codrea posts in response to my post few a few days ago.  I agree with several of David’s points.  Namely:

As for Mr. Sawders’ letter, again, I agree it would not be advisable to send such a missive if the goal was to persuade Judge Hendren to “do the right thing.” What I reject is that anyone is capable of writing such a letter.

The judge has proven he is a creature who considers stare decisis the supreme law of the land. He will be guided on the sentencing by what the prosecution wants and what the guidelines and precedent say.

I essentially agree here.  I do think there are a lot of folks out there who feel, rightly, like they are backed against the wall on the gun issue.  I also agree that there is often no right case, and sometimes you have to go to court with a less than ideal case because it’s the right thing to do.  What I do want to discourage is people getting themselves arrested with the intent of pushing a case through the courts.  There might come a place and time for that, and when it comes, we’ll need folks like Mr. Fincher.  I will post later on what the ideal first case might look like as a theoretical exercise, but David is right to point out you don’t always get to do things ideally.  He’s also correct to point out:

is the court will rule it an individual right, but so narrowly, and with such deference to “compelling state interest” and “reasonable restrictions” as to make very little difference in terms of hampering new legislation to outlaw “assault weapons” again, “close the gun show loophole,” retain and share NICS data, etc., and of course, in terms of enforcing “existing gun laws.”

This is definitely something to be afraid of, and a big fear of mine as well.  I’m not going to say much else about the topic of Mr. Sawders’ letter, because I don’t really want to stir up trouble within the community, and I am sympathetic to many of his arguments.  We’re all on the same side, and while I think it’s good to air out differences in strategy and tactics for time to time, we need to keep our energy focused on the real opposition.  Especially with the media seemingly bring gun control back to the surface in a big way.

I’ve noticed a few hits from Google and a few other sites for the Kriss Super V, along with some speculation about whether there’d be a civilian version. I’ve always been one that, if you take the machine gun out of submachine gun, it just doesn’t really interest me.

I can accept semi-auto versions of assault rifles, because assault rifles are generally most useful with the selector on semi-auto, with burst and full auto mode being only for those oh so special occasions. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have M16s and M4s in my safe, than AR-15s, but I still think semi-auto ARs are great weapons in their own right, and worth owning and shooting.

But give me a semi-auto version of a submachine gun, and I just want to cry. Same with belt fed, semi-auto versions of classic machine guns. It’s just sacrilege. These weapons are meaningless as semi-automatic arms, and that’s why I don’t plan on making anything belt fed acquisitions until I can collect proper examples, that function the way God, and John Moses Browning, intended them to function.