Elon Musk’s guns on his bedside table trigger ignorant activists
Plus, I keep real guns by my bed unlocked and why that is safe
Elon Musk tweeted the photo below and freaked out gun control activists who don’t know the firearms are fake.
Musk said it was a photo of “my bedside table” which drew the ire of leading anti-gun groups who declared the firearms should be in lock boxes. Neither the George Washington replica pistol nor the video game revolver is a real gun.
The mass hysteria over toys is amusing, but the bigger issue is the misinformation that law-abiding adults have to lock their guns at home, as I tweeted back to Musk:
Triggered by toys
“WTF is wrong with you? Is there a mental health concern? Are you now using your $44B to incite violence?” tweeted Fred Guttenberg, who has been a prominent gun control activist since his daughter was tragically killed at Parkland. He was angry that the toys were shown not locked.
This Johns Hopkins doctor, below, who runs an anti-gun activist group that campaigned for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, told Musk that the safest way to store guns is “Unloaded and Locked.” (If it’s unloaded and locked, you wouldn’t be able to use it in self-defense.)
“...We recommend you safely store your guns in a biometric safe separate from your ammunition” the group Newtown action tweeted at Musk. (I have a couple of those biometric safes that use fingerprints to lock, and they’ve never once worked. I use the key if I close it.)
The founder of “Moms Demand Action,” Shannon Watts, proclaimed that Musk was putting children in danger, even though it’s unknown if the Twitter CEO lives with his children.
Sophia Nelson said if Musk is “afraid of someone” then he should get “an alarm and guard security.” She claims she keeps her own guns in "holsters and carriers” at home. (I don’t know why putting a gun in a holster or bag is “normal.”)
Unlocked guns at home
I asked Mark Oliva, the managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which is the lobby group for gun manufacturers, for their policy. “We recommend that firearms be locked when not in use,” the NSSF exec said. “If you are having it accessible when you’re home alone, that’s in use.”
I don’t lock my guns at home unless someone with kids comes over. And, as I tweeted, when I feel unsafe at night for some reason, I just put a loaded gun on my bedside table for easy access. As Oliva said, it’s “in use.”
It should not be controversial for law-abiding adults to have guns at home that are unlocked. That is how we can access them quickly for self-defense.
The gun control activists are aiming at the wrong target. Responsible gun owners — which are almost all of us — know to keep them on our bodies or locked when there are children around. The criminals don’t take these precautions.
How to recognize the gun is fake
I saw the tweet and noticed there was no trigger on the revolver in the foreground, but I asked Oliva to analyze the photo in more detail. He said he could see the “novelty” firearm has no hammer or ports in the cylinder where you would insert a cartridge. He noticed the barrel has no marking and two screws that shouldn’t be there.
The Truth About Guns says the gun in the back is a George Washington commemorative flintlock pistol that is a non-working replica. The blog says the revolver is called a DiamondBack .357 MA-Hex20 that is in a video game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
Oliva said the flintlock might be the real deal. I’ll let one of you experts tell me what is a flintlock in the comments.
Biden ban on semi-auto guns
While on vacation in a billionaire’s house on Nantucket Island for Thanksgiving last week, Pres. Joe Biden said this to reporters:
The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.
The remark is either alarming or shows complete ignorance. Almost all guns now are semi-automatic, meaning by pulling the trigger, another round gets loaded in the chamber.
If Biden were to ban all semi-auto guns from being purchased, then we would only be allowed to buy shotguns and revolvers. (BTW, neither of Musk’s guns would be semi-auto if they were real.)
Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked on Monday about the president’s Nov. 24 declaration. She said:
He was talking about assault weapons. That’s what he was talking about on that — on that morning or that afternoon when he was asked that question.
Biden has been pushing gun control laws for over 30 years, so do you think he truly just confused the terms semi-automatic and assault weapon?
In case you missed the subscriber chat in the app, I sent this out on Thanksgiving:
Get in the chats with me here:
“The idea 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” said Biden.
??! Who the hell is this "we".
It doesn't sound at all like "We the People".
Heller, McDonald, Bruen.
Look it up, Joe.
I'm still waiting for someone to actually define "assault weapon" or "assault rifle".