The Uninvited Ombudsman Report, No. 97 - Magazine Ammo Limits Are A Smokescreen, Experts Say

Taken from the most recent "Page Nine", Alan Korwin's "The Uninvited Ombudsman Report"

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1- Magazine Ammo Limits

The lamestream media told you:

30-round magazines are too dangerous for the public to have. There is no legitimate use for large magazines. If this Tucson murderer had smaller magazines he would have done less damage. Magazines over ten rounds should be outlawed. Banning magazines over ten rounds will make you safer, even if the New York Times said, after the last magazine-size ban, that it had no impact on crime whatsoever. Just because something doesn't work, doesn't mean we shouldn't try it again. Anyone can see that small magazines make you safe.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

The 30-round magazine debate misses a key point.

Depriving the public of gear as a way to stop murderers is misguided because it cannot work. It puts you at risk, and at its core, is a thinly disguised effort to get to zero-round magazines -- in the false and dangerous belief that disarming innocent people will finally disarm criminals.

Several legislators (state and federal) asked me for talking points so when they face the media on the latest anti-gun-rights barrage they have clear, cogent, common-sense responses. This is my reply to their requests.

The Crux

By focusing on magazine size instead of ways to stop active shooters you jeopardize everyone's safety.

Hoping to limit murderers by limiting magazines is irrational and hoplophobic.

Why have people picked a ten-round limit? Why not two?

Are they saying it's OK to only kill ten people? That makes no sense.

Would you make police obey the same limit? Why not? This is key.

Parity with Police:

The public faces the same criminals police do. Any restrictions for the public must match what police can use. The public is always first at the scene.

If you can't justify impeding the police with ammunition limits, you cannot legitimately justify impeding the public that way.

What's needed to stop rampages is not another law written on paper, but speedier law enforcement, or any armed people who can respond.

A criminal can't have a magazine of any size. A law restricting size adds nothing.

None of these arguments matter.

People who want to restrict magazines are on a roll, using the Tucson assassinations for momentum. They want any kind of gun bans they can get, regardless of crime fighting, public safety, logic or reason. Magazine size is merely the soup du jour. They are emotionally compromised.

Limiting the amount of ammunition a person has for self defense is dangerous. Standard magazines in modern pistols like the police use hold 17 rounds or more.

The only way to stop a lethal attack is with countervailing force.

The correct response to a mass murderer is not to restrict the public, but to empower the public and give us every advantage possible.

People are always the first responders. Police are second responders. We face the same criminals. We both need the best tools we can get.

We know that laws banning murder and armed criminals don't stop criminals. Why would you want to do more of the same when you know it doesn't work? (Because it's a hoplophobic response, not a rational one.)

An infringed-capacity magazine violates your civil rights.

Confiscating or banning normal magazines you already own is a direct violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

Infringing on the size of a magazine doesn't stop crazy people. Imagining that it somehow will, now that's crazy.

Will magazine-size bans feel good, as if you're really doing something? Yes.

Will they actually do something? No.

Reasoning

Will a magazine limit stop a murderer from carrying several guns? Of course not.

Will it prevent swapping out magazines? How do you propose controlling that?

Infringing on magazine size has no effect on the millions of magazines already out there.

Limiting the public doesn't limit criminals. It just limits the public.

Trying to stop crime or crazy people by limiting magazine size can't work. In fact, we tried that, for ten years under president Clinton's size ban. It's a proven failure. The NY Times admitted this.
http://www.gunlaws.com/NewYorkTimesAndGuns.htm.

Resurrecting a proven failure reveals that the magazine-size debate is about bans, not about public safety.

The public should have at least as much ammunition as police can have.

Because people face the same criminals police do, we have an honest need for equal gear.

Attacking the right to an uninfringed magazine because of one assassin is a political game, not a meaningful solution to homicidal rampages.

Using a tragic homicidal assault for leverage against civil rights is reprehensible.

Using tragedy to advance a political agenda aimed at incrementally disarming the public is the ugliest underbelly of politics. It's shameful.

Killing Is Fun!
Someone has to say it -- With constant Technicolor promotion of "the thrill of killing" from Hollywood and TV, we can expect another homicidal rampage. We must be ready to stop it when it inevitably occurs.

They're not deranged, they're imitating --
With Hollywood and the networks glorifying immoral behavior, portraying killers as heroes to be emulated, and mourned when put down, it's false to classify copycat crimes or killing sprees as mental disease.

The proper response to the recognition that people can go berserk and cause mayhem is to foster a culture of marksmanship.

From army posts to grocery stores, homicidal attacks take place in make-believe gun free zones. Paper signs do not deter murderers.

A phony gun-free zone made by posting a sign may feel good, but it has been repeatedly proven to be extremely dangerous and negligent.

A person who posts a no-guns-allowed sign should be liable if it causes any harm. See the model legislation at gunlaws.com.
http://www.gunlaws.com/GFZ/GFZ-BillReview.htm

Murderous carnage has nothing to do with magazine size and everything to do with opportunity. Crowds of unarmed people offer murderers a field day.

If legislation really could stop criminals there wouldn't be any.

Laws do not stop crime. Law enforcement stops crime.

Politically Corrected Glossary

Always frame the debate as pro rights vs. anti rights, never as pro gun vs. anti gun, which yields ground to the antis.

This is a civil-rights issue, a question of fundamental human rights.

Always talk about discreet carry, a cultural and civilized norm, never about concealed carry, which sounds like you have something to hide.

Always refer to personal sidearms, a neutral and non-inflammatory term, never to handguns, a word that has been vilified beyond usefulness.

Remember that assault is a kind of behavior, not a kind of hardware. The media loves that word because it spins the debate to their liking, and makes firearms automatically bad, instead of true focus on bad actors.
Assault is a kind of behavior, not a kind of hardware.

Always ask a person who questions assault-weapon possession what guns they're talking about exactly. They do not know.

Any weapon you can own is an ordinary household firearm, the type you might find in any American household.

Don't waste time and audience attention correcting ignorant reporters who talk about clips or bullets. Let them remain self-evidently ignorant.

See the entire Glossary at gunlaws.com.
http://www.gunlaws.com/politicallycorrect.htm

2- New Report Ranks 64 Nations For Gun Availability and Rights

-- Swiss come in 5th, America is number nine

The lamestream media told you:

America is drowning in guns and is the only nation in the world that has so many people with guns in every closet.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

A new study set for release in March has found that the United States does not lead the world for availability of guns to the public.

The 64-nation Worldwide Gun Owner's Guide
http://www.gunlaws.com/WGOG.htm

Contrary to popular belief, every nation studied except one has some level of gun rights, gun possession, and an active “gun culture,” with clubs, shooting ranges and stores catering to the public.

Completed after nearly a decade of research by prolific author Larry Grupp, who personally lived in or visited most of the nations in the report, every nation is ranked for relative gun freedom, and its position on a scale from 1 to 64. Details on each nation's gun culture are included in separate chapters for each country. The Worldwide Gun Owner's Guide is being released by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Bloomfield Press, the largest publisher and distributor of gun-law books in America.

“It was remarkable to see that we weren't number one in the world, since the common wisdom is that America is awash in guns, and we're the only place on Earth with that characteristic,” said publisher Alan Korwin, himself the author of nine books on gun law. “We stand in line behind the Swiss who are famous for maintaining armed households, and peaceful first-world countries like Finland, New Zealand, and even tiny San Marino in the heart of Europe.”

Repressive regimes tolerate private gun possession, often with severe restrictions, against a public that struggles for greater freedom just as Americans do. Only one nation in the study, Vietnam, was scored at zero for complete suppression of the right to keep and bear arms. It sets a terrible example to consider as a model for a gun-free society, though it might earn high marks on a Brady-style report card (and it is hardly gun-free). It might make sense for the political left to outline what they do consider legitimate gun ownership, so they don't get smeared with the communist Vietnamese example.

Even communist China, which technically bans all private firearms, has been building military ranges for its rich and elite citizens, where they can rent and enjoy firing an assortment of arms. This earned it a 2% rating on the freedom scale, a tiny crack in an otherwise monolithic rights-denial structure.

Pre-orders are now being taken for The 64-nation Worldwide Gun Owner's Guide here --http://www.gunlaws.com/WGOG.htm. Pre-orders will be held and cards will not be charged until books ship in early March or sooner. Per-orders assure you will be among the first to get this groundbreaking new book.

Review copies for the news media are available upon request.

The Worldwide Gun Owner's Guide
Retail: Only $19.95 + S&H (€14.95 contact us for overseas shipping)
Wholesale: 40% discount by the dozen (call for distributor pricing)
Pages: 368

Size: 8-3/8 x 5-3/8 - inch
Binding: Trade paperback
ISBN: 978-1-889632-27-8

Author: Larry Grupp, with a foreword by Alan Korwin
Publisher: Bloomfield Press, USA
4848 E. Cactus #505-440, Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Website: GunLaws.com
Order hotline: 1-800-707-40
Click to order: http://www.gunlaws.com

Highlights: Gun laws in 64 nations are described in non-technical terms, demonstrating that a popular civilian gun culture exists on a planet-wide basis. Availabilities, resources, prices, clubs, red tape and background and even travel tips for each nation combine to paint a picture of the firearms freedom in each country. Each nation is ranked for its gun-rights freedom both numerically and as a relative percentage. See where your native land stands on the worldwide chart.

3- Author calls for overhaul of NICS gun background checks

"BIDS" system works better, costs hundreds of millions less

The lamestream media told you:

The Brady law's NICS background check system is flawed and it does not catch all criminals. The system should be expanded and its loopholes closed. In other news, the government is out of money, hopelessly in debt, and cost savings must be found across the entire national budget.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

a) The extremely expensive and labor-intensive NICS background check concept for firearms can be dramatically improved with a system called BIDS, while saving most of the astronomical costs, reducing the national debt, and eliminating the possibility of illegal gun registries growing in federal government hands.

b) The NICS system for retail gun sales does a fair job, but it is incredibly complex. The staff needed to handle 33,000 checks a day on average (about one million checks per month) is huge, though actual employee counts are not known (when started, the call center itself had 900 people). The reduction of the size of government here could be significant.

c) Civil-rights advocates are justifiably worried that the NICS system, which requires gun dealers nationally to call an FBI center for every gun sold, is ripe for abuse, and could be compiling lists of innocent people, against every tenet of modern law. When originally implemented in 1994, then-attorney-general Janet Reno, contrary to statutory requirements, claimed the system compiled registries of gun owners with no way to reverse this -- astounding hubris in the computer age. The FBI and BATFE flatly deny they compile lists, as the law strictly requires. There is no independent way to confirm this however, and critics fear the lists may be in federal hands despite law to the contrary.

d) Any checks that include non-national sources such as Scotland Yard, the Royal Canadian police or Mexican authorities, would put the information in those hands, with no requirements to destroy records and preserve the privacy of American citizens. A diagram of how NICS works is available at gunlaws.com: http://www.gunlaws.com/images/nicsbig.gif

e) A simple, cost-cutting, efficient alternative called BIDS can be easily implemented, and removes the significant problems and especially the costs associated with NICS.

Basically, BIDS distributes the encrypted, password-protected list of hardcore prohibited possessors ("the NICS Index") to federally licensed firearm dealers' computers. The files can be updated all day long as needed, as people are added to the list or through appeal and corrections, come off the list. Dealers check their potential customers against their local computerized list to lockout illegal sales. BIDS offers the identical sales-security as NICS does. This maintains the privacy of innocent citizens and eliminates the potential for illegal government registries. The system cost goes from the current labor-intensive huge budget outlays to tiny database-updates costs that are already in place. We rely on dealers under BIDS the same as we do under NICS, that doesn't change.

Dealers cannot use the list for any other purpose, the same as they cannot use NICS for other purposes. (They actually can for both NICS or BIDS, of course, but it's illegal and would cost them their licenses). BIDS would be subject to the same safeguards, audits and penalties as NICS. BIDS that “Blind Identification Database System” saves buckets of money, shrinks government and does the same job. It's simple. It's cheap. It works. Do it. Is there a legislator with the cojones to propose it? Ask yours. Here are the details and more talking points: http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDS%20v.%20NICS.htm

The main objection is going to come from the FBI and bureaucrats, because it takes power and budget away from them. But that's a good thing. If that's the only objection, here comes BIDS, goodbye NICS. Speak with your state gun-rights groups, http://www.gunlaws.com/links, or your legislators directly, tell them you know how to save tens of millions, and stay on it. You can make the difference.

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CONTENTS:
(searchable by item number)

1- Magazine Ammo Limits
2- New Report Ranks 64 Nations For Gun Availability and Rights
3- Author calls for overhaul of NICS gun background checks

Page Nine is now a blog! You can sign up for automatic RSS feeds and find a wealth of interesting information at PageNine.org

Thanks for reading!
Alan Korwin
The Uninvited Ombudsman

Related News Coverage:
Washington Post - Why 33 rounds makes sense in a defensive weapon