January 2012 – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Freedom Group Acquires ParaUSA

So says NSSF. Press release here.Â Para Ordinance started out as a Canadian company, then moved to North Carolina and renamed themselves ParaUSA. A while back, Para took some of the gun bloggers to summer camp at Blackwater, and I reviewed their LDA trigger. While as a Glock shooter, I didn’t have too much trouble with the trigger that many 1911 shooters had, Joe Huffman found a failure mode with it that was unaccepable in a carry gun, so I’ve never carried it. I was able to replicate this failure mode on mine as well, though I never experienced it during live fire.

Para always seemed to be a company struggling to figure out what it wanted to be, and struggling to figure out ways to differentiate itself, and stand out in a crowded market. I’ve always thought they had the potential to be much better, and maybe the Freedom Group will be able to take them somewhere interesting. We’ll see.

Lack of Critical Thinking

Joe has an observation about our favorite Brady Board member, which makes him ponder:

If the lack of critical thinking skills was something that common it makes me wonder how we ever made it out of the dark ages. And much more important is the answer to this question, “Is the prevalence ofÂ Peterson SyndromeÂ evidence we areÂ headedÂ into dark age?” Freedom and enlightenment may have been just a short twinkle in the big picture of human history.

It really is kind of amazing. How many Jeffersons, Madisons, or Adamses were there ever in the world? Clearly not enough, and I don’t think our elite today can even live up to their example. I don’t think people’s lack of critical thinking skills is harbinger of a dark age, because I’m not sure your average people had much in the way of that even in the age of enlightenment.

Ultimately, we still aspire to critical thought in the sphere of the public debate. If this were not the case, the Brady folk wouldn’t need to do studies, or publish papers in an attempt to convince the greater public to accept their political agenda. Instead they’d be doing things like performing exorcisms in houses they’ve recently removed guns from in order to get rid of the evil spirits that inhabit them. While I think many of our opponents certainly have the menality that would enable such thought, when it comes to convincing others, they know they have to go the way of reason and data, which probably has something to do with why they lose today… modern means of horizontal communications has allowed many of their assertions, accepted as truth by dead tree media, to be challenged and swept away as weak arguments.

Showing Your Cards

When we started looking at the new Brady boycott of Starbucks, we wondered if they would be silly enough to show their cards. I assumed they wouldn’t when they were making crazy claims like this:

Because we outnumber the NRAâ€™s extremist members by 50 to 1, NGACâ€™s economic lever gives our side a strategy the NRA cannot defeat.

There’s simply nothing to actually back that up. Under the supervision of actual DC professionals, the official Brady Starbucks protest of two years ago kept their numbers secret for a reason. They collected the “petitions” in order to build their email list, and they could then claim to do “something” even if no one signed other than the staff and board members. This new Brady division seems to have forgotten some of those key points.

They actually started a competing Facebook event for their boycott. As of this post, they have 137 planned attendees. Okay, so maybe it’s still something that Starbucks could be losing 137 customers. However, looking at the comments on their wall, that’s not the case. Here’s a sample:

“reeeely EZ to boycott a place I never go lol”
“Oh I have HATED coffee shops for many many years..EASY PEASY!”
“I ALWAYS boycott Starbucks because of Schultz’ views about Palestine”
“I have always boycotted Starbucks.”
“I don’t do Starbucks because I don’t drink coffee.”
“I am in a perpetual boycott of their sub par hot chocolate and overpriced pretentious products.”
“This may not be as difficult for me as some others. I’ve never been in a Starbucks.”
“I HAVE NEVER BEEN IN A STARBUCKS FACILITY BUT I SUPPORT WHAT YOU ARE DOING BECAUSE YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A CONSIENCIOUS PERSON WHO ADVOCATED FOR ISSUES THAT WERE IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE.”
“I quit using Starbucks more than a year ago, but I totally support your efforts on this important issue!!”

There are like two people who have said that they ever visit Starbucks and may reconsider during the boycott. Otherwise, Starbucks is only being “boycotted” by people who already don’t shop there.

Meanwhile, on our side, our folks are going out of their way to support the company. Those who are regular customers are planning on buying a little extra on February 14, so ultimately they win. As of this post, Starbucks is gaining more than 9,200 customers old and new on February 14. So, yeah. Those numbers make the case pretty clearly. Which is why I’m still shocked they actually wanted to show their cards like this.

UPDATE: I guess they were tired of us showing over and over how low their numbers really are since they have now hidden the number of attendees from their Facebook event page. Thirdpower has a screenshot from yesterday morning when they had 132 attendees.

Another Beating in Philly

This is becoming a weekend pasttime, it seems. This time a cabbie interveined with a tire iron and the miscreants fled. They were caught, and are being charged as juveniles. I’m calling BS on that. If they are old enough to beat people, they are old enough to be tried as adults.

But yeah, what kind of paranoid freak would carry a gun in that city?

Scott Bach for NRA Board of Directors Video

This year, NRA board candidate Scott Bach also decided to put together a video highlighting some of his work on behalf of gun owners in the last few years. Take a look at it, and I think you’ll see why we consider him worth your support.

Missing Your NRA Ballot?

If you’re an NRA voting member, you should have received your ballot magazine in the mail by now. If you did, then you can go right back to our endorsement post and fill out the little circles next to the names of all of those fine gentlemen.

However, I be a good number of you are about to start commenting and emailing that you never got your ballot this year! Type and rant away…please. Unless you belong to one of the following groups:

You live in Hawaii. (I’m jealous.)
You went green (or simply hassle-free) and get your magazine digitally.
You just recently became eligible to vote.
You don’t take a magazine at all.

This isn’t the full list of exemptions, but it’s the overwhelming majority. I’m in this category because of the digital subscription.

Anyway, we all get our ballots by first class mail, and the first mailing is going out on February 1. So, provided Congress doesn’t say to hell with it and shut down the USPS, your ballot should arrive sometime shortly after this date. I presume that members in Hawaii get their ballots by first class mail because of the snail’s pace mail at other classes can take to get out there.

For anyone who has recently become eligible to vote or will become so before the “deadline” in mid-February, there will be another first class mailing towards the end of February.

If you are not in any of those categories and your February magazine has not yet arrived, give it a little extra time. It’s not impossible that mail is moving a little slower right now, as it has been for us for the last couple of months. I would say that if you still haven’t received it by February 4, give NRA a call and inquire. You will probably need to ask to speak with the Secretary’s Office about a missing ballot, but they may have procedures for their standard member number phone folks to handle it with so many different kinds of ballots now going out thanks to the digital subscriptions.

Some Minor Network Maintenance

If you were having trouble accessing the blog earlier this evening it’s because I was installing a new firewall. Previously I had the machine serving the blog connected directly to the outside, and used firewall rules on the server to filter out the undesirable traffic. I decided to buy a little Linux-based appliance with a MIPS CPU that can handle my WiFi, VPN, and firewalling all in one unit. Previously I was using the ActionTek box that came with the FiOS, but I was becoming displeased with its capabilities.

The only question now is whether this little box can stand up to the torrent of traffic you get from an Instalanche.

David Coy for NRA Board of Directors Video Introduction

I am almost always happy to see it when candidates for the NRA Board of Directors try new ways to engage with NRA members. There are certainly enough empty seats on the Board, and there are many who you simply won’t ever have the chance to engage with if you don’t live in their state.

Anyway, David Coy put this together for his 2011 run, but I think it’s an introduction worth sharing this year.

Ammo Ban in New Jersey

Looks like the legislature is considering giving the attorney general carte blanche to ban whatever ammo he or she wants. Also on the table is a proposal that would criminalize using a “defaced” firearm. But as is noted, the definition of that is so vague it could apply to a firearm that was refinished or subjected to ordinary wear or rusting.

Funny how other state legislatures seem to be able to define scratching off a serial number unambiguously, but Jersey can’t. They’ve been listening to the likes of Bryan Miller, who seems to have a goal to get more gun owners behind bars, for far too long.

A Good Suggestion on the $2 Bill Thing

TTAG has been promoting the Starbucks Buycott, which is greatly appreciated in terms of helping get the word out to a wide audience. One minor note, however: I’m not really on board with the paying with $2 bills. I’m not going to say it’s a bad idea, but nor do I think it’ll accomplish much in terms of influencing Starbucks. Corporate is the one that will make the decision about guns, and I can promise you what denominations people pay in isn’t among the things reported up through the chain of command. All paying in $2 bills is going to accomplish is making the person handling the money ask you for something else, or be annoyed they have to deal with an uncommon denomination. It’s not likely to percolate up to the decision makers. But Barron Barnett came up with a great variation on the two dollar bill idea that I think works:

Shove the 2 dollar bill in the tip jar. There will be 0 complaint for that. I can understand being annoyed if you were needing change. Taking their few remaining 1â€²s and giving them 2 dollar bills would be a PITFA.

Putting a 2 dollar bill in the tip jar and telling the Barista why would go a LONG way in putting a smile on their face.

I think that’s a pretty good idea, and I’ve actually done that to get rid of two dollar bills in the past. Everyone appreciates a tip, even if its in an oddball denomination. One thing I would encourage folks to do is take pictures of their receipts, post them online, and send a note to corporate along with a link to the receipt, telling them that you’re a gun owner, and you appreciate then staying out of the gun control debate. Don’t say you appreciate them being pro-gun or supporting the Second Amendment. The corporate guys at Starbucks don’t want to be pro-gun or anti-gun, and aren’t going to be comfortable being seen as either. What they want to do is sell more coffee, and a good way to do that is staying out of contentious political debates. What the Brady and NGVAC folks want them to do is take a stand, which is exactly what we don’t want them doing.