How Aggressive, Incompetent Legislators Can Make Felons out of Free Men

Oregon Ex Post Facto Gun Registration Law (ex SB941)
(Which law makes it a felony to transfer a firearm between individuals without involving a third party and registering your gun.)

I'm not sure exactly when Oregon's "Register Your Gun To Transfer Your Gun" law is scheduled to actually become law, but I suspect that I've already violated the terms of that unconstitutional act.

I mentioned the other day last month that I had broken my gun.  (Well, the trigger.)  A friend offered to fix it for me, knowing full well that I and mechanical things don't get along.

Anyway, I gave it to a friend who is more mechanically inclined than I am to fix it.  I ordered the needful parts and had them sent directly to his home.  Then at the next match we were able to meet, he gave my now-fixed gun back to me.

Pretty simple, huh?

But I think .. depending on the day of the week when either transfer took place ... one or both of us may now be felons.

Here's a suggested scenario, which may or may not be true.

I broke my gun on Monday, and gave it to my friend to fix on Tuesday.  Wednesday the law came into effect.  On Thursday my friend returned my repaired gun to me.  On Friday my friend and I were arrested because we didn't go through a third party (someone with a Dealer's license) to register the transfer.

My friend is not a dealer, nor a 'registered' armorer .. which means nothing in this state but surely it's the next step in refining the terms of the bad bill which has been passed but possibly not yet enacted.

 (I don't know if this law applies to us this week.)

So .. when I transferred my gun to my friend to repair, I didn't process the 'transaction' through the (as yet non-existent?) legal process.

But when he gave it back to me, we still didn't ask The State for permission to perform this entirely innocent act ...

So are we both felons now?  Or if not, is ONE of us a felon and the other innocent ... for performing essentially the same act of transferring a firearm between us??

We may both, or one of us, have run afoul of the law.  Which of us should be sent to jail, and is the other innocent merely because of fortuitous timing?

Dangerous Dan: The Man Who Would Not Quit

Everybody liked Dan.

But things happened to him.

I met Dan during my first year of shooting IPSC matches ... back when they had only three Divisions; Stock, Open, and Revolver.   And nobody was really sure what constituted an "OPEN" gun, because we rarely saw any that year.


Dan was an 'older' gentleman (probably 55 or so .. which age range I would now consider 'not older'), and he was an experienced competitor.  And he knew more about the rules of competition than I did.

Not that he had ever been trained as a Range Officer, but he had been around long enough to call me on it when I put "NEW SHOOTER" on my scorecards on my third match.  I admire a man who was willing to call me on my bullshit, although I was disappointed that I could no longer count on forgiveness from the range officer.

So I always tried to squad with Dan, because I knew that I could learn things from him.

REVOLVERS:
The first thing I learned from Dan was that Revolvers were not (in and of themselves) the perfectly functional piece of machinery which we had been trained to believe them to be.

Ever see what happens when you load a revolver with a round that has a high primer?

I remember with a certain amount of schadenfreude watching Dan trying to recover from a revolver which cylinder would not revolve because he had a high primer.  It was a simple stage of about a dozen rounds, but it required a reload.  Dan had not carefully inspected his ammunition (he loaded his own, obviously) before the match, so when the cylinder locked up after he reloaded the gun during the stage, ... well, did you ever see the Television advertisement for Samsonite luggage?  The one where the gorilla bounced all over the cage trying to open the suitcase?

That's what Dan looked like.

He couldn't unload the revolver .. it was in the middle of the cycle, so even though it was a double-action revolver .. he couldn't get the cylinder to swing out.  He couldn't advance the cylinder to the next register position, and he couldn't fire the revolver.

He ended up pounding the gun against some kind of standing prop (I think it was a vision barrier mounted on vertical two-by-fours), and then beating it with a rock which he picked up from the ground, and finally dragging out his pocket knife to use as a tool.

I think it took him about five minutes to resolve the problem.

And then, instead of taking a zero on the stage, Dan had the nerve to reload with more ammunition from the same batch and finish the stage.  I think his points score was in the low forties, and his time in the high 300's (seconds) in a 60 point stage.

Although I didn't understand the reason for his perseverance at the time, I now think it was that Dan would NOT be beaten.  He might not win .. but he would not LOSE!


Glock KaBOOM!

The second time I saw Dan really get into trouble was later that same year.   He wasn't shooting Revolver any more, but he had borrowed a Glock in .40 S&W from another shooter and using borrowed (from the pistol owner) ammunition.

You have probably already guessed where I'm going here.

Here's proof that the government DOES want to take away your guns.

Idaho residents line up outside veteran's house, protest fears of possible gun confiscation | Fox News: BOISE, Idaho –  (August 06, 2015)

A group of residents in northern Idaho lined up outside a U.S. Navy veteran's house on Thursday to protest claims that federal officials are planning on confiscating the man's weapons. Idaho Republican state Rep. Heather Scott of Blanchard said the Veteran Affairs office has sent a letter to John Arnold of Priest River warning him that he cannot possess or purchase firearms.

This is one of those situations where a veteran has been declared "incompetent".   This is a word which has several possible interpretations, which range from "he needs a lawyer to help him understand the legal complications which may influence his fiscal decisions" to "he can't remember to put his pants on before he leaves his house to pick up the morning paper on his front yard".

Currently, the incompetency declaration doesn't have a single guaranteed avenue of appeal.  Which is to say, there are a lot of guvmint wonks who can make the declaration, and it's unclear what the appeal process would be like ... or even if there is an established process where a veteran can appeal this declaration.

Which is a really shitty way for the guvmint to treat our vets ... especially in that it underlines the confidence that veterans can got to Veteran Affairs to help them when they are overwhelmed by either medical or financial issues.

Japan marks 70th anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing | Fox News

Japan marks 70th anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bombing | Fox News: HIROSHIMA, Japan – �
August 06, 2015

Japan marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Thursday, with Mayor Kazumi Matsui renewing calls for U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders to step up efforts toward making a nuclear weapons free world. Tens of thousands of attendants stood for a minute of silence at 8:30 a.m. at the ceremony in Hiroshima's peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 attack, marking the moment of the atomic blast. Then dozens of doves were released as a symbol of peace.

In other news, Americans who still remember the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 .... wonder whether America has grown too soft to defend itself against foreign aggression.

Especially considering that the Secretary of State has signed a sweetheart nuclear deal with Iran:

Outraged families of American victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism moved Wednesday to block the deal to lift economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for nuclear inspections, filing a federal lawsuit to stop frozen assets to which they stake a claim from being released to the Islamic Republic.

I'm sure that President Barack "Has No Green Card" Obama and Secretary of State John "Unsafe At Any Speed" Kerry have the best interests of their country at heart.

Navy: May be okay for Military Servicemen to defend themselves

Navy unlikely to charge officer who fired at gunman:
(August 05, 2015)

 Lt. Cmdr. Tim White, the CO of Navy Operational Support Center Chattanooga, has not been charged with "illegally discharging a firearm on federal property," said Cmdr. William Marks, despite the claim of a conservative commentator. "Stories of Navy personnel being charged with an offense are not true," Marks said in a statement. "There is still a long way to go in reviewing the facts of this tragic incident, but at this time we can confirm no service member has been charged with an offense."

This statement by a U.S. Navy spokesman may be a result of pressure from the public at large, or it may be that the military is beginning to wake up to the FACT that Negligent Discharges by armed servicemen is a lesser consequence than having unarmed members assassinated because they are unable to defend themselves.

I chatted with my son "The Squid Kid" about this last week.  He is a Navy Master at Arms Petty officer, and one of his duties is to provide arms training to other Navy personnel.

He was quite vocal about the low quality of the people who he had to train, in terms of their initial training.  Essentially, they had NO familiarity with firearms, and often seemed to be afraid of holding a gun.  As a consequence, they were a danger to themselves and to others.

The Navy and the Air Force are basically formed in support of "Weapons Platforms": Ships and Airplanes.

The Marines and the Army are the services who leave to the concept that "Every Soldier/Marine is a Rifleman".  The other services ... not so much.  So when a Naval officer accepts the duty of defending his fellows by force of personal arms, that is (in the caustic terms of the despicable Joe Biden) ".. A Big F*CKING Deal!"

It think that if one American is injured or killed accidentally by another American who is trying to provide armed support, then that's a tragedy.

If one American is killed or injured deliberately by a Terrorist who is not opposed by force of arms because of a chicken-sh*t high-level policy, then that's an outrage.