The Alligator News Roundup, Gun Edition

For you gun nuts, this Roundup is wall to wall firearms. For the rest of you, stay tuned. You might find you like it anyway.

Number Five. 24/7 Wall Street dot com. Americans own guns: 50 states ranked.

If you don’t feel safe in your neighborhood it may be because crime is on the increase, and maybe made worse by the knowledge that neither you nor your neighbors own guns. This might be the case in about a dozen states of the U.S.

The states with the smallest number of guns owned by civilians in private collections reads like a Who’s Who of blue voting.

Those states with the fewest households owning guns are: New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Rhode Island, New York and California.

As you might expect, the states with the most households owning guns is at the other end of the political spectrum: Montana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Idaho, Alaska, South Dakota.

The U.S., Guatemala and Mexico are the only three countries in the world where owing a firearm is constitutionally protected.

In the U.S., privately owned civilian firearms are estimated to be in excess of 430 million. In a country of 330 million, that’s about 1.3 guns each.

This estimate is almost certainly low, because of what we might delicately refer to as “reporting error.”

[Doorbell rings]

“Hello, I’m with a non-profit sporting association and I’m here to ask whether you own a gun.”

“What?”

“Do you own a gun, sir?”

“Err… guns? No.”

“I only ask, sir, because we are taking a survey, and I noticed the 15 racks of deer antlers displayed on your garage. Are you sure you do not own any firearms?”

“Who is it, dear?”

“Some wacko liberal who wants to know about our guns.”

“Slam the door. I’m calling the neighbors.”

“Really, sir, it’s an anonymous survey, purely for informational purposes. You will not be identified in any way when we provide the results to a government research team.”

“Makes no difference. I ain’t got no guns here.'“

“Sir, this is rural community in the mid-west. Most people in your neighborhood own at least one firearm, I’m sure.”

“You talk to any of my neighbors?”

[uncertainly] “No… it seems there is no one home this morning.”

“I told you to slam the door! Darrell and Joe-Bob are on their way!”

“Oh look, sir, there are a couple of your neighbors now. It seems they own guns. They are even carrying them.”

[Door slams amid indistinct shouts from outside.]

However, considering that only 1/3 of American households contain a firearm, that means that only 100 million people own the 430 million plus guns, which is roughly 4 guns each.

Some of you in this audience are way above average, and I suspect that you know who you are.

Number Four. Slate dot com. Supreme Court’s big gun case was humiliating for justices.

This being November, the Supremes are deciding which cases to hear this term. Decisions will be rendered, as usual, the following summer.

In the wake of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the 2021 decision which struck down state limitations on private ownership of firearms, new cases have been presented, and a few of them have been selected for review by SCOTUS.

One of these is United States v. Rahimi.

A Mr. Zackey Rahimi has a history of indiscriminately setting off rounds from a pistol or an AR-15. He has fired (without hitting anyone) at people in parking lots, into moving cars and stationary houses, and loosed several shots into the air when his credit card was declined at a Whataburger.

It’s not that he is unpredictable with his firearms; he is entirely too predictable. Enough so that a court issued a restraining order to keep him away from both his guns and his girlfriend.

Mr. Rahimi violated the order and was arrested. He challenged the charges, claiming the law that supported the protective order was unconstitutional; it deprived him of his 2nd Amendment rights under Bruen.

The heart of this matter is that the Bruen decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, says that a contemporary law restricting gun ownership must be rooted in traditional, historical restrictions.

Rahimi argues that during colonial times, guns were not removed by government authority when a citizen acted irresponsibly.

That much is probably true. In colonial times, the guy’s dad or uncle or neighbor or pastor probably just beat the tar out of him.

Nevertheless, the sea-change that Bruen has made in firearms ownership in the United States has given rise to novel and restrictive new legislation in blue states, has offered fertile new ground for attorneys of irrational shooters to make fresh arguments, and has prompted left-wing journalists to find new ways to hate Clarence Thomas.

This should be really entertaining. And also dangerous to the survival of the Republic.

Number Three. The Gateway Pundit. Gun sales spike following Maine and Hamas.

Big violent events always result in two highly predictable and opposite reactions: Liberals outlaw guns, conservatives buy more of them.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and the shooter from Maine attacked the bowling alley 3 weeks later, Americans were suddenly reminded how comforting it might be to have a gun handy.

Sales of new firearms leaped up over 8% in one month, and ensured a continuation of the longest-running month-to-month increase in background checks in history. Applications for purchases have now risen each month for 52 months in a row.

As Isaac Newton predicted, every gun action creates an equal and opposite anti-gun reaction — maybe those were not his exact words — and those who see the gun as the problem rather than the solution jumped at the opportunity to introduce more restrictions on firearms ownership.

I would anticipate a flurry of activity in enhanced red-flag laws and much more restrictive background checks. The background checks thing, by the way, is another way of saying national gun registration.

While one could be tempted to believe that the police ought to know who in their community owns a gun, consider that there is a strong conviction that gun registration leads to gun confiscation.

Whether you believe that or not (find as much evidence on the web as suits you… spend the rest of your life reading opinions) it should be obvious that if your government wanted to take your gun, your government would first have to learn if you have a gun.

At the present time, it appears that about 8% more Americans have a gun than had one last month. Or at least that Americans now have 8% more guns than Americans had last month.

Number Two. Just the News. New Mexico gun buybacks might not prevent crime.

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is having a hard time staying out of The Alligator News Roundup. I think this is third time in the last couple of months she has been featured. I ought to give her a free subscription or something.

After her abortive attempt to prohibit gun carry in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) in September, she is back with a new executive order in November. This one is a declaration of a public health emergency, just like the last one, but with a vastly reduced scope.

This time, it will be illegal to carry a firearm into a public park or a playground, until December 1. After that, I suppose those places once again become free-fire zones.

It would be instructive to learn, although this article does not tell us, how many homicides were committed in public parks and playgrounds over, say, the last year.

Equally enlightening would be how many homicides committed there were illegal homicides. As opposed to legal — in other words, justifiable — homicides.

But wait, there’s more!

The Governor has also initiated a gun buyback program. The spokesperson for the New Mexico State Police explained that this is a safe and anonymous way to surrender unwanted weapons.

What the owners will do with their “wanted” weapons is not addressed in the buyback program. But Grandpa’s rusted, non-functional .22 revolver is worth a cool $200 gift card, while your neighbor’s 12 gauge which he irresponsibly left unguarded in his locked garage is good for $300.

Your own high capacity 9 mm Glock, which you might have obtained in trade for a ration of whatever the latest illicit drug might be (I actually have no idea), is probably more in the line of your “wanted” weapon.

Number One. RedState dot com. Author James Patterson posts about the founders and guns.

If you really want to understand something, ask an expert. But first, you should probably figure out who the expert is.

It’s not necessarily the same as a guy who writes a lot. (Just look at me.)

Acclaimed author James Patterson, who has about billion action adventure book sales to his credit (not really; only 425 million according to Wikipedia), gave us the benefit of his thinking this week with his opinion about guns, writing on TwiXer:

“…Assault weapons [belong] in the hands of law officers and our military. I honestly don’t see why anyone else needs to have a machine gun. I’m 99% sure that Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Washington, and the Adams boys did not foresee assault rifles in the hands of farm boys back in the 18th century…”

This statement got a lot of attention from fellow Americans, as you might guess.

Here’s my take: The founders may not have been able to foresee it, but on the other hand, they faced the most well-equipped and feared troops in the world. If they could have had a few battalions with M-4s — or even Winchester 73s— I suspect they would have taken them.

And that’s The Alligator News Roundup, Gun Edition, for Friday, November 10, 2023. Don’t forget to do your Christmas shopping at www.alligatorpublishing.com where the just-released Alligator Wrestler’s 52-Week Devotional Guide is now available.

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In a couple of weeks, we’ll start telling you of our special Christmas series, featuring exclusive interviews with Santa Claus himself. Keep listening! Have a good weekend!

Curt