Guns aren't stupid, People with Guns Are.

I see one of Oralloy's Flint water buddies has gone on a shooting spree

9-year-old found gun and fatally shot 6-year-old in Florida

The incident adds to the growing tally of children up to age 17 killed this year in gun violence:
1,114 as of Wednesday, with another 3,065 injured, Gun Violence Archive data shows.

Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than any other way – a grim cause that
surpassed car accidents in 2020. Firearms accounted for nearly 19% of deaths in 2021 of
children ages 1 to 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention WONDER
database.

Nearly 3,600 children died in gun-related incidents that year – about 5 children lost for every
100,000 children in the United States.

Authorities in Hong Kong arrested a politician from Washington state after he stepped off a flight from San Francisco for having a pistol in his carry-on bag.

Jeff Wilson, a Republican state senator, was granted bail Monday after being charged with possession of an unregistered firearm. A court hearing in Hong Kong, which China administers, is set for 30 October.

“It was an honest mistake, and I expect the situation to be resolved shortly,” Wilson’s office said in a statement on his website.

Wilson said he did not realize the pistol was in his briefcase when he passed through US airport security, and only discovered the unloaded weapon, he said, when he reached in to get some chewing gum mid-flight. He said the gun was registered in Washington state.

Wilson was travelling with his wife on a five-week personal vacation to Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand. And he said he alerted Hong Kong customs officials after the plane landed.

But the Wilsons’ holiday is now disrupted. Though a Hong Kong magistrate granted bail to Wilson, the state senator’s travel documents were confiscated, and he was ordered not to leave the city, according to Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily.

Penalties for possession of arms or ammunition without a license in the region run up to a maximum of 14 years in prison and a fine of HK$100,000 ($12,800).

But the magistrates court where Wilson is set to appear typically hands down sentences of two years or less, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Wilson’s Republican colleagues in Washington state said they hoped his case could be resolved expeditiously.

“We are learning about the incident with [Wilson] at the same time as the press and public here in America. As I understand it, this was an honest mistake,” Washington state’s senate Republican leader John Braun said in a statement, according to the Journal.

Figures from the US transportation security administration show officers at pre-flight screening found 6,542 firearms at 262 different American airports last year.

when this yahoo managed to sail through US airport security with an actual ******* gun.

There is no solution to the gun problem and little more to write, because Americans are addicted to firearms.

Representative Jared Golden, from Maine’s Second Congressional District, has reversed course and says he will now support outlawing military-style semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston this week. But neither the House nor the Senate is likely to pass such a law, and if Congress actually did, the Supreme Court, as it now exists, would almost certainly rule it unconstitutional.

Every mass shooting is a gut punch; with every one, unimaginative people say, “I never thought it could happen here,” but such things can and will happen anywhere and everywhere in this locked-and-loaded country. The guns are available, and the targets are soft.

When rapid-fire guns are difficult to get, things improve, but I see no such improvement in the future. Americans love guns and appear willing to pay the price in blood.

Azealous gun rights group, even more uncompromising than the once formidable National Rifle Association, is emerging as a force in US politics with a mission to oppose efforts at gun control and ease further America’s already lax regulations on firearms.

Last year the Gun Owners of America (GOA) spent $3.3m on lobbying, a record sum for the hardline foe of gun control that now claims over 2 million members and activists, and has previously operated in the shadows of the larger NRA.

The GOA’s record lobbying spending in 2022 was spurred in part by a rise in its annual revenues, which more than tripled from $2.3m in 2016 to $8.7m in 2021, according to tax records.

The GOA is an adamant enemy of gun control measures of all stripes, and proudly calls itself the “no compromise” gun lobby. Its surge in lobbying spending reflects one way it has capitalized on the financial and legal problems of the once 5 million-member NRA in the hopes of expanding the GOA’s political clout, say gun experts.

“The GOA was formed in the 1970s because they believed the NRA was too liberal,” said Robert Spitzer, the author of several books on guns and a professor emeritus at Suny Cortland in New York. “True to its creed, the GOA has opposed every manner of gun law and attacked the NRA at every turn.”

The GOA’s anti-gun control posture was underscored by its opposition to a bipartisan compromise gun control bill in 2022 that closed some gun law loopholes, including for prospective buyers under 21, and implemented gun violence prevention policies, becoming the first gun control bill enacted since 1994.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act garnered just 29 Republican votes in Congress, but the GOA this year in an alert to its members warning of pending legislative threats suggested those votes were “cowardly”.

The GOA’s lobbying efforts in 2022 were notable in another way: it was the only gun rights group to increase its spending in 2022 according to OpenSecrets, and surpassed the NRA’s lobbying expenditures of $2.6m last year, a drop of over $2m from the NRA’s 2021 total.

Through the first six months of 2023, the GOA spent $1.8m on lobbying, putting it on track to equal or surpass the $3.2m it spent last year.

As it has ramped up its influence activity in Washington, the GOA also touts its member chapters and allies including the California Gun Rights Foundation and other ones in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Nationally the GOA and its chapters have flexed their lobbying and legal muscles in some significant fights in several states. For instance, in New Mexico the GOA has claimed success in obtaining a temporary restraining order against new gun curbs in Albuquerque.

On the legal front, the GOA has also filed amicus briefs – with help from the conservative lawyer William Olson, who put forward some aggressive schemes to Donald Trump in late 2020 as he sought to overturn his election defeat – in at least two major cases pending at the supreme court where the GOA is seeking to thwart existing and new gun regulations. This month the court heard arguments in US vs Rahimi that could overturn a 30-year-old ban on guns for individuals under domestic violence restraining orders.

Gun experts say the GOA has long tried to outflank the NRA on the right as the most implacable opponent of gun control measures, and now sees an opening to expand its influence in federal and state battles over gun control.

“With the mostly self-inflicted damage the NRA has suffered, the GOA very much wants to replace the NRA as the nation’s pre-eminent gun rights group,” said Spitzer. “To that end, it is raising and spending more money, filing more suits against gun laws, and has formed its own Super Pac and political victory fund. These and other tactics mimic the NRA’s traditional political playbook.”

In Spitzer’s eyes, “the GOA’s prospects for success depend on the extent to which the NRA can recover from its reversals and retain the loyalty of gun owners”.

The NRA has reportedly lost about 1 million members since 2019 after allegations of financial misconduct surfaced and the New York attorney general sued the CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, and other top executives for using the NRA as a “personal piggy bank”.

Some ex-members of Congress say that historically the GOA has tried to exploit a perception that the NRA is too moderate.

“For years, the NRA had concerns about losing members to the GOA and other extreme groups,” the former Republican congressman Charlie Dent said. “Any time the NRA tried to compromise on something, the GOA would accuse them of selling out.”

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A man was injured after the gun he was carrying inside a Costco went off by accident, police said.

The incident happened at Costco’s Brick Township location off Route 70 around 1 p.m. Sunday.

The gun was being carried by its owner at the time, police said. He sustained injuries that were not considered life-threatening, but police did not say if he was taken to a hospital.

It was unclear if Costco staff took any safety measures after the gun went off. Attempts to reach a Costco company spokesperson on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump told thousands of members of the National Rifle Association that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he returns to the White House, and bragged that during his time as president he “did nothing” to curb guns.

“During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” he said as he addressed the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Friday evening.

Casting himself as ”the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House,” Trump pledged to continue to protect gun owners’ rights, even as the country grapples with a crisis of gun violence and mass shootings that have left more than 3,000 dead since 2006.

“Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president,” he said.

Guns aren't stupid; nor are they paranoid.