This is TTAG’s weekly roundup of legal and legislative news affecting guns, the gun business and gun owners’ rights.
There’s one thing that happened this week that isn’t really legally related, but I just can’t resist writing about: the ＹＥＥT ＣＡＮＮＯＮ.
Hi-Point vs The Entire Internet
Hi-Point unveiled their new pistol at the SHOT Show. It was just a 3D-Printed model, but it showed some pretty cool features: a double stack mag, a threaded barrel, and the distinctive Mansfield brick styling we’ve come to know and… yeah.
Then Hi-Point unveiled their “name the nine” contest on June 12, where users could submit monikers for the new pistol. A couple days later, Hi-Point posted the most-submitted names, with a clear front runner: Yeet Cannon.
The internet was ablaze with legions of fans posting their desire to purchase dual yeet cannons upon their release. Then, on June 14, Hi-Point posted again, this time with a list of “finalists” for the pistol’s name. Notably absent was the crowd favorite.
The comment section erupted. Hi-Point’s owner was purportedly responding to comments explaining that there was no way he would allow their newest product to be named something so dumb.
There was also a pretty profound misunderstanding of the definition of the term “yeet,” which I will not get into here. For most of the day, fans were 1-staring Hi-Point wherever they could. The internet wanted their yeet cannon.
H&K, Beretta and SCCY all got involved in a pretty stunning display, including H&K co-opting Hi-Point’s newfound fame and claiming the Mk23 is the “original” Yeet Cannon(?!?)
Hi-Point eventually backpedaled. Hard. They claimed that “it was all a trick!” and the final vote will be in a few weeks, with “the yeet cannon” vs. one of the incredibly lame names on their previous post.
Some are arguing that it was in fact all a 3D chess-level clever marketing trick. I’m not so sure. Having watched the comments sections since early in the ordeal, and reading the responses from Hi-Point, it seemed pretty clear the company originally had no interest in letting the name go forward. Possibly because the owner lived through the “street sweeper” debacle, the only time a firearm was added to the NFA more or less exclusively due to being named so egregiously.
NJ Sues Company for Trying to Sell NJ Residents Things They Want
Hi-Point wasn’t the only one struggling with the internet this week. New Jersey Attorney General Grewal recently revealed that the NJ government had been using “undercover state investigators online” (read: desk cops with Chromebooks) to try to purchase magazines that hold more than 10 rounds from out-of-state companies.
New Frontier Armory in Nevada, it seems, sent what they thought were customers the products they ordered. A shock! To think that a company operating within the law of their own jurisdiction might expect out-of-state customers to be informed about their own local laws.
Worry not, for New Jersey plans to sue every retailer in America to ensure they all enforce New Jersey’s laws for them.
NJ Joins CA in Push for Smart Guns
New Jersey first enacted a “smart gun” law in 2002, which required “smart guns” to be sold once such technology became viable. That has yet to happen, but a series of new bills signed into law by Governor Murphy will be requiring all licensed firearm dealers in the garden state to stock and advertise “smart guns,” a gun with an electronic interlock that only allows the licensed owner to fire it.
A host of sister bills passed at the same time, tightening the screws on gun and ammo purchasing, adding a whole host of misdemeanants to the category of people prohibited from owning a firearm in the state, among other things.
Sanctuary from 1639 in Washington State
We’ve talked about Washington’s Initiative 1639 a lot in recent weeks. There’s been as much tumult as you can imagine in enacting such a profound change of course in the state.
That said, city councilors in Yacolt, Washington unanimously declared the city a sanctuary from Initiative 1639 on Tuesday. This is the first local jurisdiction to establish sanctuary status from the bill, meaning local law enforcement will not provide any aid in enforcing the new law. It’s not a total fix, but it certainly communicates disapproval of the policy. Similar efforts are underway throughout the state.
New Zealand Wants a Discount on Guns They Banned
We’ve talked a lot about the Kiwis and their impressively unsuccessful firearm confiscation plan. Now New Zealand is offering a gun buyback, but residents are refusing. In droves.
Why? Well, a number of reasons, including that owners of now-illegal firearms feel massively ripped off by some of the “fair” prices being offered by the government. A New Zealand gun owners group announced this week it was exploring a plan to sue the government over its undervaluation of the newly banned arms.
Greg Abbott Vetos Airport Gun Ban
State Rep Rafael Anchia of Dallas put forth a bill purporting to give state officials the ability to carry their firearms in certain parts of the airport. So what’s the issue?
Well, according to Governor Greg Abbott, who vetoed the bill on Tuesday, “the Legislature may have intended simply to keep firearms off the tarmac, but the bill as drafted would newly prohibit carrying in any part of the airport terminal building, even ahead of the TSA inspection checkpoint.”
I’m glad someone is actually reading laws before they sign them. You can only glean so much from a bill’s title.
YC-9 is a great name. I’ll buy it when it’s the YC-45.
I’m looking forward to getting those in the shop! YC9… I like that name. Id be disappointed if they don’t swallow their pride and use it.
🤠
I’m going to get the YC9 simply as a thank you to Hi Point for updating their guns to use mags that hold more rds, have threaded barrels, and just do away with the AWB compliant designs they currently have. Well, not do away entirely, the less than free states are those pistol’s bread and butter.
I would definitely buy a YC45, I’m looking now for cheap .45’s that have threaded barrels and right now the options are a used Glock, a used cheap Rock Island 1911, and a S&W M&P… all those options are going to cost me at least $450. If Hi Point makes a YC45 and they offer mags that hold at least 12 rds, they will never be able to keep up with the demand.
YC-10! I’d buy it
I know Hi-Points are often called blocky, but 10MM??!! The slide would literally have to be the size and weight of a cinderblock.
The YC-45 is a special edition of the H&K Mark 23 “YeetKanone” YC-45.
Yeetkanone.com
By the way, voting for the Yeet Cannon YC9 name is now underway through July 15 at
hi-pointfirearms.com.
At the time of this posting, YC-9 is winning with about 89% of the votes.
2019 is a weird year so far. People are talking about how much they want to buy the new Hi-point and HK is trying to do a collaboration photoshoot with Hi-point. The Yeet Cannon shows the power of memes and that the people on the internet can never be trusted to name a product. I love this so much!
Years ago the UK asked the public to name a new boat and the results were disastrous. I think it was boaty Mc boat face or something like that.
Never ask the internet to be serious.
Exactly. The British have a long history in Antarctic exploration. I’ve been to their base on Rothera Island, it really is an amazing outpost.
Anyway, they built a new research ship capable of working in the ice. When the public was invited to submits names for the ship, the winner was “Boaty McBoatFace”.
So, they named the ship the “RRS Sir David Attenborough”. But there is a remote controlled research submarine carried onboard which they gave the “Boaty McBoatFace” name to.
I wouldve voted for the HiPoint to be named Boaty McBoatface too!
Years ago, Mountain Dew had a public contest to name a new drink flavor. The winner was ‘Hitler Did Nothing Wrong’.
About a decade ago Louisiana had a contest to put a new state motto on it’s license tags, a motto to be chosen by the public.
“At least we’re not Mississippi” won and, obviously, the state rejected putting that on their plates.
Tou mean like Boaty McBoatface?
Why would a company want to run a contest to name a new product after the “Boaty McBoatface” contest. The public is only as good as the lowest common denominator.
Shooty McShootface?
I like it.
This just in…
Notoriously anti-everything UK apparatchiks just announced special dispensation for crew aboard “Boaty McBoatface” (also known as Saily McSailfaces.)
Otherwise banned arms are permitted these more-equal sea mammals, by select model names. (Borrowing the listing things from their yank cousins.)
Gun models Shooty McShootface, and all variations of Yeet Cannon are permitted. As are pointy knives if named “Stabby McStabface”, and canes n walking sticks if named ” Clubby McClubface.” Anything that resembles a sheleleigh is still banned, because this is England n screw the Irish.
This.
Dont have public opinion contest if you dont want a doofus name nowadays.
Some people revel in emulating cartoon network.
The problem was the Boaty McWhatever and the Hitler one were both from contests that put zero effort into preventing fraud, so the edgy websites like 4chan rallied the troops to flood votes for the stupid names.
For the Yeet name though, that one seems legit for the target market.
The ONLY Hipoint I’d ever want is a 10mm carbine. My HP 380 was an absoulute POS. You can meme a turd but it’s still chit😫
the gateway drug to the .40 magnum! truly, i agree.
The new Hi-Point should have been named Problem Solver.
Given that the New Jersey ban exempts police, New Frontier Armory didn’t commit a crime even under New Jersey’s illegal laws.
That’s a great name.
Excellent point about NJ. They can claim otherwise but the fact is cops ordered the stuff. Case over.
Still, if I worked at New Frontier Armory and had to visit relatives in NJ I think it might be a good idea not to mention to anyone there where I worked. Remember the old saying that possession is nine tenths of the law. They will then get you for something and throw the key away.
I think “Hi-Point Regulator” would be a cool name.
The Pro’lem Solva’ is for the .40S&W model.
Good point about the NJ law. I’ll bring it up next time I swing by New Frontier.
I think PS 9 is better personally
POS9 even better.
POS9 was what I was thinking also. Seems like Hi-Point thinks they can create some hipster appeal to their low end pistol line. I guess they have to do something considering there are a lot of quality pistols available for not a whole lot more. I saw the original M&P 9C is selling for $319 at some online sellers but who would want a pistol with a mundane name like 9C.
hi- point has a low end? or… high end?
They might be inexpensive, but they are very accurate and go bang every time you pull the trigger. Add the fact that if you wear one out they’ll send you a new one for free and you begin to wonder about those that DON’T own at least one.
PSA already stole the march on them:
https://palmettostatearmory.com/psa-ar-15-yeet-cannon-stripped-lower-receiver.html
For true yeating at great velocity!
So did SCCY. With a quickness.
Ya beat me to it!
Aero Precision as well:
https://www.aeroprecisionusa.com/yeet
To be fair, these are all responses to Hi-Point’s flub.
So did KNS Precision –at least you can replace the YEET non-rotate pins with something less shameful when this fad is over…
Red California localities should start 2A sanctuary policies. When the state AG goes after them, it will be interesting to see how they can explain sanctuaries for ILLEGAL aliens are okay, but sanctuaries protecting rights upheld by the constitution are not okay.
Does anyone know if something like that could make it to the SC? A favorable ruling could be a game changer for illegal alien sanctuaries and 2A government overreach nationwide.
Why stop There? Plenty of other laws we need sanctuary from.
I’m in the market for an IRS sanctuary city.
I hope Hi Point will put out a stock for their carbines that utilizes the double stack mag!
I like it! I’d love to own a Yeet Cannon. 😀
A bunch of people are going to buy a bunch of this yeet stuff and thinking they’ve got a collector’s item, only to find out in 10 years that they’ve got the Beanie Baby of the gun world.
Which only adds to the hilarity.
No one in the world is buying a HI Point as a collector’s item
Um….maybe… I bought a 9 and 45 2 for 300.00 + tax. Ain’t shot either one. They are still in the Boxes. But if I do need a truck, don’t care if it falls out kinda gun…. plus I can always use them and dual wield hand clubs and put a serious hurt on a bad guys noggin’
But then again my collection of toys keeps growing, leaving out the Hi-Points above, I am up to 40 toys and counting. Not that I have a problem or anything….. ;{ )
Care to make any recommendations on gun safes?
Are you saying my beanie baby retirement fund has no value?
What a load! Next thing they’ll be saying the 300, 000 baseball cards from the 90’s I have aren’t worth anything.
Yup, you’re SOL.
Should have stocked up on Magic: The Gathering
Did I sell my Mox Pearl too soon?
If you sold any legacy power cards ever you sold too early. I sold back in 2000 and the inflation has been unbelievable since then. Many legacy decks are worth more than my car.
I don’t think anyone is ‘investing’ in YEETery…I think they’re just having fun & being foolish.
Truck G U N where’s the edit button? Did it get Yeet cannon’d out into the void?
As soon as I saw that Hi-Point was letting the internet name their new pistol, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a “Hitler did nothing wrong” 9mm. Alas, I suppose I could settle for Yeet Cannon.
Thank the stars, a yeet cannon, now I can finally get rid of this yeets infection.
I was talking to New Zealand gun owner on Tuesday who just received one of the rarer M1 carbines about the same day as the Christchurch shooting. He is not allowed to send it back out of the country or take it to the range and because it is “used” he might get half of his money back.
A great way to create an instant black market.
If it works, work it. I’ve always found it confusing that with Australia’s history that it would not be a pro gunm country. New Zealand same same.
Makes perfect sense; both have had quite a lot of inflow from England and like-minded places in the years after the penal/colonial frontier times. The various British colonies/commonwealths seem to trade citizens pretty freely, so you’ll see Scots & Aussies all over Canada courtesy of work programs & so-on.
Also, the people that came to America & defined its culture largely chose to, and that combined with their various protestant traditions became our fiercely individualist ethic. The penal colonies were filled by people brought against their will under state control; it should be no wonder the social ethics developed with a more subservient bent, closer to the old ways back home.
Erm, New Zealand was never a penal colony, all settlers paid their own way, and paid for the land that was either gifted by, or confiscated from, the original Maori inhabitants. There was a very fierce Moari Wars period in the mid 1800s, requiring defensive arms for settlers in case of rebel Maori war parties attacking, so there was a strong firearms culture. More importantly, the settlers imported game animals, which thrived in the thick bush, giving a vast network of bushland sites abounding in pig and deer, thar and goats. Plenty to shoot here. And a strong commercial effort in providing quality hunting weapons for sportsmen snd women. We are required by law to have gun safes, and many people have filled theirs to the brim. We don’t have the same paranoid, fear crazed shoot ’em up mentality of the American public, nor is the need or availability of handguns. We have our guns only for target or hunting purposes, and there has generally been very little in the way of gun crime here (with the exception of drug gangs taking potshots at each other occasionally, and mostly missing).
Unfortunately we also have a hotchpotch government hastily drawn together from three disparate and antagonistic parties, which has mostly talked big and delivered very little, with most ministers being incompetent idiots. Yet the only time they all worked in concert in a rapid fashion, was to rapidly screw gun owners with poorly considered, hasty legislation, with the connivance of the insipid National Party opposition, all while I was in hospital with a broken leg. Most gun owners are hoping to wait out all this foolishness, in hopes of a change in government in a year’s time, and the scrapping of this ridiculous, overhyped legislation, based on the emotional outcome of a deranged Aussie’s massacre of innocent Muslims in Christchurch, rather than detached, level headed consideration of what changes were actually needed. The needle was pushed way too far, and need to swing back to the middle again. We need grown ups to sort this out, not the naive morons we currently have in charge.
Martin B, I’m glad to hear that there is no violent crime at all in NZ, so Kiwis have no need to defend themselves with hanguns, unlike we paranoid, fear crazed shoot ’em up Americans. Congratulations!
You have had your guns only for target or hunting purposes and now you have nothing, except for some measly money.
We have our arms to be able to fight tyranny, should it ever appear. Hunting, self defense and fun on the range are just perks. If our government tries to do what yours did, very bad things will happen very fast.
Kiwis resisting gun control?
But I thought I read somewhere, in some comment section or another, how they were all a bunch of bootlicking crown worshipers who wouldn’t know a human right if it bit them on the ass!?
Fucking strange. I’ll have to find that comment section and send in a strongly worded comment demanding that the interwebz users wait for like facts and shit.
Also, weird how that plays right into the naming of the Hi-Point story.
And they aren’t complaining about the confiscation. They are complaining about the money. See the diff?
The event I was at yesterday they were complaining about both but if their firearms are going to be taken they would at least like a fair price.
how about simply calling it the HiPoint HiCap. as far as the kiwis go, NOW they fight their gun control?
No, they don’t mind getting screwed. They just want to get paid better.
More name votes that possible buyers.
I liked the 21C9. 21st century 9. Unfortunately they weren’t looking for a serious model number.
“Yeet Cannon” is just about the most stupid name for anything I’ve ever heard. But HiPoint deserves it for leaving it up to The Internet™ to decide such a thing.
They need to save ‘Mighty Yeet Cannon’ for the .45 version.
At the risk of doing the same myself; why is anyone wasting ink on this? In fact; why is anyone wasting ink on a Hi-Point?
That’s fantastic! “The Yeet Cannon!” Love it ! LOL!
Yeet Cannon YC-9 is a yes.
Vote for Yeet Cannon YC9 on Hi-Point’s website June 25 – July 15.
On Tuesday June 25th at 2:00 pm EDT, Hi-Point will reveal on their website the name (Phase 2 winner) that will compete against the “Yeet Cannon YC9” in the Phase 3. You can still vote for the Phase 2 name today, but why bother?
The YC9 will crush the final vote.
“I am inevitable.” Yeet Cannon
I thought the perfect name would be, simply, “Gat”
Voting now underway for the name YC9 Yeet Cannon on hi-pointfirearms.com
Sorry but its the dumbest name ever.
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