Tag Archives: Politics & 2nd Amendment

Advice from the Killing Fields

Since 2012, I have written about 3,200 articles for Guns.com (sheesh!), most of which I chose not to share here as they are generally on gun law and politics such as on-going legislation and litigation and that gets not only tedious but also divisive. Every now and then I will do an opinion piece for them when something really gets me ready to eat my hat.

And I did one a couple weeks ago in open response to a VOA article which offered some wisdom by Chheang Vannarith, chair of the advisory board of the Cambodia Institute for Strategic Studies, about how Cambodian gun laws are so much better than those in the U.S., and how we could fix gun violence here :

“First is gun management. Second is pushing back on extremist trends, and discrimination in American society,” Vannarith said.

The solution to gun management is the most straightforward, he said.

If federal governments or state governments in the US cannot manage gun ownership effectively, then people should not be allowed to carry guns.

“The new US government should endorse a high standard of gun law and should not allow the people to buy or stock guns at home or carry with themselves,” he said.

My take on that, and what is probably the biggest instance of the pot calling the kettle black in recent months, is here should you want to partake.

Connex loads of quiet headed overseas?

Back in 1976, the Ford Administration approved the Arms Export Control Act as part of the NDAA which gave the State Department the juice to regulate foreign military weapon sales and transfers. Part of this, under the later International Traffic in Arms Regulations, led State to put the kibosh on commercial sales of things like night vision gear and suppressors , citing they were defense articles.

hk 91 with suppressor and m1 garand silencerco photo
This means that while countries like Norway, Finland, New Zealand and the UK have lax laws on the sale of “silencers” for sporting and target purposes, U.S. firms like SilencerCo, Gemtech and Surefire can sell all they want to the Royal Marines or the Norwegian Army, but not to good old gameskeeper Mr. Thatcher or hunter Mr. Johansson– even though local laws are cool with it.

I did speak to several inside the beltway and the suppressor industry about that last week, and a new legislation, the logically named Suppressor Export Act, to change the regs.

More in my column at Guns.com