A look at the latest in gun control folly from the Great Lakes State.
Brace yourselves Michigan firearm owners: A bevy of new gun laws just
took effect. From so-called safe storage requirements – which make home
defense much more problematic – to the ineffective background checks
and extreme risk protection orders that could see law abiding citizens
disarmed without due process, it’s high time for a close look at the
latest in gun control folly that makes the Great Lakes State a much more
dangerous and less free place than it was just a day ago.
Safe Storage: Safer Only in Theory
Michigan
residents are henceforth required to keep all firearms being stored or
left unattended unloaded and locked away if it is “reasonably known”
that a minor might be present. If a minor “possesses or exhibits” a
firearm in a public place or in the presence of another person in a
“careless, reckless or threatening manner,” the owner of the weapon is
guilty of a misdemeanor criminal charge punishable by no more than 93
days in jail, a fine of up to $500, or both.
Should said minor then fire the weapon and injure themselves or
someone else, that misdemeanor becomes a felony punishable by up to five
years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 – ten years and $7,500 if
the injury is “severe.” If the wounded person dies, the punishment for
the gun owner – not the minor who pulled the trigger – goes up to a
potential 15 years in prison and as much as a $10,000 fine.
The real life-and-death issue here is in home defense. In theory, an
adult with children living in the home could usually remain in
compliance with this law and be ready to fend off a home invasion simply
by keeping a firearm on their person even at home and locking any
others away. That would work most of the time – taking a shower,
changing clothes, or sleeping raises some issues, of course, as does
playing with the kids while wearing a deadly weapon. But imagine all
firearms but the gun-owner’s everyday carry piece are locked away
unloaded where the kids don’t have access to them.
Now imagine the armed adult is away from the house while an older
child is home, and a home invasion occurs. Even if the eldest has
permission and access to where the weapons are stored, there’s the
problem of retrieving that weapon from its locked location, loading it,
and using it in self-defense before anyone with violent intent can act.
Michigan, at least, does address the issue of home defense by
negating all this should the minor be acting in self-defense. Not all
states do.
Virginia State Delegate Nicholas Freitas, the Republican representing
Old Dominion’s 62nd district, asked that very same question just last
month in the debate over Virginia’s own safe storage bill, HB183. In a
short video posted to YouTube on Jan. 31, he explained the issue. Here is his own hypothetical question – and the insane answer to it:
“I said, ‘Look, I get what you’re trying to do here.
You’re trying to make things a little bit safer.’ I said, ‘However, I
live in the country, where the police are generally at least 15 minutes
away on a good day. So, if my 16-year-old daughter, who has been taught
to handle and use firearms responsibly since she was five years old, if
she’s home alone and somebody – oh, I don’t know, maybe that you let
out on parole, because you do a lot of that around here – is kicking in
our door in order to harm my daughter and she uses one of my firearms
in order to protect herself, am I now a criminal?’ And after a very,
very lengthy, lawyerly explanation, the answer was, ‘yep, you sure are.’
Make it make sense.”
But the core issue remains: An unloaded firearm locked in a box is
useless. That’s fine for hunting and sporting guns, but a home defense
weapon must be reachable and usable by whoever is going to defend the
home. The trick to this situation – as just about any rural gun owner
with kids can tell you – isn’t to hide the weapons from the children,
but to train the children in the responsible handling and use of the
weapons.
Will the New Laws Work as Intended?
Safe storage requirements with both misdemeanor and felony penalties
aren’t the only new Michigan gun laws that create crimes where none
existed before or increase the potential for death by unintended
consequences. One such law requires anyone who isn’t a federally
licensed firearm dealer (FFL) to “complete a record in triplicate on a
form provided by the department of state police” that includes either
the buyer’s concealed weapon license number or, if they aren’t licensed,
the dealer license number of the FFL who did the background check.
In short, all purchases – even between private individuals – must now
go through an FFL for the sake of having a background check and a
record of the sale.
The problem is that universal background checks don’t work. If a
criminal is looking to acquire a gun for the commission of a crime, he
already most likely plans to steal it or buy it from someone without
going through an FFL – regardless of whether he can pass a background
check or not. All this does is make a crime where no crime existed
before. Those who plan to commit murder or robbery at gunpoint won’t be
deterred. Don’t believe that? Just look at California’s atrocious record.
Then there’s the extreme risk protection order – or so-called red
flag law – that just took effect. As is the case in most states with
similar regulations, it is now possible for a judge to issue an order
for police to confiscate weapons from a Michigan resident who has no
idea that he or she has been ordered disarmed.
What’s worse – again, as
is the case in most of these states – Michigan allows no-knock warrants
and pre-dawn raids. It shouldn’t take too much imagination to see how
this could go horribly awry and cost the lives of law enforcement
officers, residents who have committed no crime, or both. What reason in
the world would an armed law-abiding citizen in Detroit have to believe
that the gunmen knocking down their door at 3 a.m. without announcing
their identity are police?
Foolish Gun Laws, Unintended Consequences
Another new Michigan law prevents people who have been convicted of
domestic violence from buying, owning, or transporting a firearm for
eight years after sentencing. This one may well save more lives than the
others – but it also renders the convict, as all such “prohibited
persons” laws do, unable to adequately defend themselves or their
families. And of all the crimes for which people are falsely accused and
convicted, domestic abuse ranks high, meaning there’s a much higher
chance of disarming an innocent person than in most other situations.
The more astute reader has likely noticed the pattern here: Whether
these gun laws achieve their stated goals or not, they all come with
unintended consequences that could cost people who aren’t otherwise
criminals their lives or their status as free Americans. As is so often
the case, gun laws devised by gun-control advocates supposedly seek to
make the world a safer place by disarming only the people who follow the
rules.
For many years I've written about the green movement and I learned from very early on, they lie, so when I write, I start with that foundational premise, and after I do the research on any subject they're ranting about..... guess what I find. They lied!
As for their doom and gloom, Chicken Little, the sky is falling predictions, they're pathetic. Here is my Failed Predictions file, along with my commentaries, If Green Prediction Was a Corporation, They'd Have a Monopoly on Being Wrong! And I particularly like this one, A Prince Who Was Potty, is Now a King Who is Potty, and Dangerously So!
Many years ago a customer who knew about my articles asked if I believed in global warning. I said, yes, and I believe in global cooling, but I don't believe mankind has anything to do with either one, and that's the issue. As for their climate models and predictions, that's garbage in and garbage out, as a result their timelines for disaster have come and gone, and the world is still here.
Environmentalism is part and parcel of a green globalist, one world government tyrannous socialist secular religion, with disaster mongering and lying as the central tenets of that religion.
A thousand years ago during the Medieval Warming Period the world was substantially warmer than it is today, and none of the disasters they're predicting for today occurred then, and there's no reason to believe they will occur now.
The world actually needs more CO2, not less. Climate change and CO2 have nothing to do with each other, except, climate change precedes CO2, not the reverse, and CO2 does not change the climate. All that's absolutely known, and now we see Michigan is going to destroy 400 acres of woodland to build a solar farm with solar panels made in China.
Remember 35 years ago the greenies were outraged at the controlled timber harvesting in the Northwest claiming logging was killing the spotted own. After destroying that industry it was disclosed logging that was killing them at all, it was the barred owl, and the greenies knew that right from he start. They lied, and now where are these green misfits over Michigan destroying 400 acres of forest to make way for solar panels? The greenies have very selective outrage because their not about the environment, they're about destroying western civilization, and sadly so many of them at the base are nothing more than useful clueless idiots.