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BATFE Firearms Advocacy Groups Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) Guns of America (GoA) pistol brace

Fifth Circuit Once Again Rules Against the ATF’s Pistol Brace Ban, As a Final Rule

I just got a Youtube notification from the MrGunsNGear channel regarding the current state of the suit between plaintiffs and the ATF regarding the current pistol brace ban.

I’ll link the Youtube video below.

In the video’s description:

The Fifth Circuit has once again ruled against the ATF’s pistol brace ban / Final Rule for FPC and it’s members but the fight isn’t over.

Mrgunsngear – Guns ‘N Gear Reviews

If you’re a member of the FPC, a family member of the defendents that filed the suit, or a customer of Maxim Defense, you’re covered.

If you’re outside of those groups, then you currently are not covered, but expect those organizations to submit for coverage in the next few days.

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active shooter background BATFE Bryce Williams checks McAuliffe Roanoke VA-ALERT VCDL Vester Lee Flanagan WDBJ

Further Discussion of Roanoke Reporter Shooting

Last week, I posted about the Roanoke shooting where a disgruntled ex-employee of station WDBJ killed two ex-coworkers.

I want to explain again that this incident was tragic.  The shooter apparently was delusional and probably needed mental help.  WDBJ had issues with the Flanagan when he worked for them.  He was one of the types of employees that give employers and fellow employees headaches with HR complaints due to narcissistic behavior.  Even when WDBJ terminated his employment, he had to be escorted out of the building by law enforcement and the room had to be cleared so that there would be no confrontation with the employees while he cleared his desk.  He had issues and his employment with WDBJ didn’t help at all.

Many people have been making this into a gun issue.  The government will never be able to predict if people will mentally snap (or not).  Penalizing people because it *might* happen is stupid.  Penalizing a whole population because a small percentage lose their minds is stupid.  Adding additional laws when the current ones don’t stop such tragic events is stupid.  Each mass murder or active shooter incident needs to be analyzed scientifically (not emotionally), as each shooter/killer has different motives and none of them represent the population that legally carries.  Case in point, when Flanagan was being escorted off of WDBJ property by LEOs, and if he’d obtained a concealed carry license, they would almost certainly have been in a much higher state of alert after seeing how belligerent he was.

So far, we know the following:

  • He obtained the weapon via legal means — a bought a gun after passing a background check and the check didn’t flag him as someone that shouldn’t own a gun.  He didn’t obtain the gun via any anti-2A declared loopholes.  This isn’t really the norm for a bad guy.
  • He had a narcissism issue (which Laurence Hammack highlights here).
  • He claimed he killed the victims because they made racist statements and because of the recent Charleston, SC church killings.

The first bullet showng above is an exceptional finding, as Virginia anti-2A groups and even the VA governor himself stated that they were going to use this killing as a means to further restrict gun ownership.  In a land of millions of gun owners, there’s no exception to someone wigging out?  More people drown in pools than people who commit mass murder in a given year.  More people die by car accidents than when getting shot by a firearm.  Just as many people swim or drive on a daily basis and many more die because of it, yet there’s no uproar over driving or swimming.  But in the end, Flanagan didn’t use any loopholes to get his gun.  He didn’t steal it.  He didn’t buy it at a gun show or via private means.  He bought it from the state- and federally-regulated method: via FFL.  He had no felonies or any history of domestic violence, so his background check came back clean.  The system worked as designed.  Did he have mental issues?   Almost certainly, but he hadn’t yet committed any crimes.

The latter two bullets listed above were personal issues that no one can control, although I fully believe that WDBJ had a responsibility to report or file a complain against Flanagan’s past aggression…that may have given the background check a chance to work, and may have prevented him from being able to purchase a gun.  Then again, if a background check prevented his purchase, he may have just used another tool as a murder weapon.

A guy was shot by LEOs in NYC this year because he was attempting to hit people in the head with a hammer while walking down a busy street.  They saw him and confronted him, he tried to kill an officer, and he was shot dead.  People die by aggressive acts all the time, but guns only get the scrutiny.  Some people use tools other than guns.  Some have run people over, purposely.  Some have poisoned their victims.  Some used airplanes (WTC and Pentagon attacks).  Some used chemically-made explosives using non-banned ingredients (McVeigh).  None of those tools have faced scrutiny and made to be regulated or illegal.  They’re tools that were abused by deranged people.

Maybe we need to start focusing on our apparent problem with mentally unstable people?  Make obtaining help a more available option, or notify people that when they see overly aggressive people to report them to law enforcement so that there’s a record of the issue.

I firmly believe that to remove from citizens the option of protecting themselves via firearms is a dangerous means of trying to keep bad people from causing harm.  If you’ve a wolf problem, is removing the guard dogs the solution?  What do you think happens when the guard dogs are removed?

You want to beat the criminal?  Make laws that stop the criminal and not the good guys.  Another thing:  if you want to catch a criminal, you’ve to think like them…the intelligence community has a saying:  “know your enemy”.  If you know them, you can exploit their weaknesses,or predict their next move(s), or at very least not play into their strengths.  Removing guns from average citizens plays into their strengths, because less guns for the good guys means more power for the bad guys.

Apparently, it was found that there were 2000+ instances where background checks stopped people from buying guns last year.  2,661 examples, to be exact.  The actual comment:

About 405,000 checks were made last year, and 2,661 attempted purchases were denied, according to the Virginia State Police, which runs the program.

That’s 2000+ examples of the checks working properly, yet you don’t see the anti-2A people focusing on that.  2000+ examples of background checks working…in a single year.  That’s very significant, in my opinion.  What we need to do is focus on the laws that work and ensure they keep working (or enhance them to work even better, if possible) and kill bad laws that only hurt legal gun owners.

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active shooter BATFE Bryce Williams McAuliffe Roanoke VA-ALERT VCDL Vester Lee Flanagan WDBJ

Roanoke Shooting – 2 Reporters Dead, Interview Person Wounded, Suspect Dead

I’m sure most of you are already aware of what happened in Western VA today (Roanoke).

A disguntled ex-employee of WDBJ by the name of Bryce Williams (also known as Vester Lee Flanagan) killed two former co-workers and also shot and wounded a person who was being interviewed at the time of the shooting.  The shooter also used a GoPro action camera to record the shooting.  The shooter, after a long attempt at escape and after uploading the footage for the public to see, shot himself in a suicide attempt hours from Roanoke, off of I-66 in Faquier county.  He was flown to the INova care center in Fairfax where he died.

This guy was a pure nut.  He was a gay Black man that appeared to have a chip on his shoulder, to the point where WDBJ terminated his employment.  He was so belligerent that the room had to be cleared of employees while he cleared his desk and was escorted off the site with a police escort.  His excuse for the killings was explained in his manifesto:  the recent Charleston SC killings and the fact that at least one of the people he shot had apparently made racist remarks toward him.  In fact, the bullets that he used to kill his victims apparently had their names written on the bullets.  He also idolized several well-known deceased active shooters (Seung-Hui Cho of the Virginia Tech murders and the Columbine school killers).

The Left wasted no time in condemning the attack but also blaming background check ‘loopholes’ and lax gun laws.  The VA governor (McAuliffe) assumed that the shooter obtained his gun via private sale, which doesn’t require background checks (which they think is a loophole in the law).

Well, it has been discovered (by ATF) that the shooter obtained his handgun, a Glock 19, via normal means — FFL.  This means he submitted and passed a background check as most VA citizens have when buying through local gun stores.

This should take the wind out of the Left’s sails, as the shooter followed the process of the law in obtaining his weapon.  Granted, he still killed two people, but there is no way to close any loopholes because no loopholes were exploited when he obtained his handgun.

The following is from VCDL’s (Virginia Citizen Defense League) VA-ALERT notification system:

This comes as no surprise to me, yet another killer passed his background check. BATFE has confirmed to ABC News that Bryce Williams had indeed purchased his gun “legally” from a dealer and passed a background check!

So, Governor McAuliffe, what was that you said this morning on your soapbox about how Virginia needs background checks for gun purchases?

Oh, and Delegate Patrick Hope – you already started an online petition to push for more background checks – what made you think that Mr. Williams had not passed a background check, just like Cho and virtually all the other mass shooters?

Here’s the story – thanks to member Walter Jackson for the link:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/26/atf-confirms-virginia-gunman-vester-flanagan-bought-his-firearm-legally/
or
http://tinyurl.com/q4a3klt 

ATF Confirms Virginia Gunman Vester Flanagan Bought His Firearm ‘Legally’ – Breitbart
by AWR Hawkins26 Aug 2015

The gun was a Glock 19 9mm.

According to ABC News, Faison said Flanagan bough the gun “legally.” And BuzzFeed reports that Faison said the ATF had recovered the weapon today. 

News that Flanagan bought his gun at a store squares with what Flanagan wrote in his manifesto, where he indicated that he “put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15.” That was two days after the heinous attack on the church-goers in Charleston, and The Telegraph reports that Flanagan said that very attack pushed him over the edge. 

Confirmation that Flanagan passed a background check means he joins numerous other attackers and alleged attackers who have passed background checks for their guns. These include John Russell Houser  (Lafayette), Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez (Chattanooga), Dylann Roof (Charleston), Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi (Garland), Jared and Amanda Miller (Las Vegas), Elliot Rodger (Santa Barabara), Ivan Lopez (Fort Hood 2014), Darion Marcus Aguilar (Maryland mall), Karl Halverson Pierson (Arapahoe High School), Paul Ciancia (LAX), Andrew John Engeldinger (Minneapolis), Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard), Tennis Melvin Maynard (West Virginia), Wade Michael Page (Sikh Temple), James Holmes (Aurora theater), Jared Loughner (Tucson), Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009), Jiverly Wong (Binghamton), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Naveed Haq (Seattle), and Mark Barton (Atlanta). 

The fact that Flanagan passed a background also calls into question Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s (D) call for background check legislation earlier today. He called for that legislation while the police pursuit of Flanagan was still underway.

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VA-ALERT is a project of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization
dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.
VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/]
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