Why This is Serious

How well we fare is going to depend on a lot of factors, but one of those is how serious the White House is, and this is not a good sign:

The White House is working with its allies on a well-financed campaign in Washington and around the country to shift public opinion toward stricter gun laws and provide political cover to lawmakers who end up voting for an assault-weapons ban or other restrictions on firearms.

One reason they’ve struggled over the past 12 years is that they haven’t had someone in the White House willing to push gun control. You have a President who is very popular with a segment of American society now pushing it in a big, big way.

A lot of people seem to think I’m overreacting, maybe because I live in a blue state. I think even people in deep red states with solid representation need to be heard from, because we might need their courage if the GOP leadership starts to look weak. I might also need your legislator twisting the arm of my legislator, to hold the Republican caucus together. If your letters focused on general anxiety about the Republican Party, and an expectation that your representative will be a leader in fighting gun control, that would be very helpful to those of us in blue states in Republican-held districts.

You know everything we’ve laughed at the gun control movement about? No money? No supporters? All that has changed:

Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and Ron Conway, a leading Silicon Valley angel investor, are helping finance the Giffords group and will co-host a fundraiser in San Francisco this week, an organizer said. Two wealthy Texas lawyers, Steve and Amber Mostyn, told news outlets Wednesday that they had given $1 million to the organization. Giffords was shot in the head two years ago in a mass shooting outside a supermarket in Tucson.

It’s a different world. Welcome back to the 90s. Now you know why they were so desperate to get leadership from the White House. Because leadership from the White House is, to quote our Vice President, “a big f**king deal.” A lot of folks don’t know how much we’ve benefitted by having no PAC money in gun control for the past 12 years.

If you know someone sitting this one out because they think the anti-gun groups don’t matter, slap them silly. We’re not facing the anti-gun groups, we’re facing the White House and the whole Obama coalition, and if you think that doesn’t matter, just ask Mitt Romney whether he agrees with you.

63 thoughts on “Why This is Serious”

    1. I don’t think the gun sales matter that much. They can spin the gun sales as a minority of extremists stockpiling, and people who generally don’t vote. If you combine the spin with not actually hearing from constituents, it will seem plausible. Lawmakers only know what their constituents tell them. Everything else can be spun. If they put real money behind it, they’ll poll in the rep’s district. They’ll make him think he’s safe.

      1. Already they’re spinning the “minority has bought guns in the last N years” to the level of the average gun owner having a $100,000 investment in them, according to someone who did the math.

        We need to counter with things like the independent Clayton Cramer and Government Accounting Office estimates this summer than there are 7.5 or 8 million outstanding CCW licenses. That’s like twice the NRA’s membership, right?

  1. “If you know someone sitting this one out because they think the anti-gun groups don’t matter, slap them silly.” And “sitting this one out” is the story of our previous election. We -have- these “leaders” (congress, and president) because folks stayed home. Now at least people are getting out to buy guns but it’s up to folks like readers here to get those people into activism. We can shout all the “…cold dead hands” slogans we want, but if people won’t write letters and talk to neighbors you know exactly where they’re going to be when the gun registration hits the fan. Act now, get others to act. -Boyd http://www.nraila.org/actioncenter/GetInvolvedLocally/

  2. The big thing people in solid districts need to realize is that your guy probably isn’t a huge gun guy too. Maybe he hunts, but so do a lot of people who don’t lift a finger for this cause, and often don’t even really agree with us. His position is likely based on a political calculation that you just have to vote this way “This is Alabama. Of course I can’t vote for a gun control bill. My constituents would string me up.” But that’s very different from being a leader in the fight, to keep the caucus together, and keep the leadership solid, even if the face of scary poll numbers that you can bet will be shoved in front of their faces day and night by Bloomberg’s people. Your legislator is probably not as solid as you think he is. Here’s a good red state letter if you’re a GOP supporter, generally:

    Dear Rep. Seen Wearing Mossy Oak Every Election Season,

    I am writing you to express my concern about the gun control bill being pushed in Congress. I implore you to vote against these measures and show leadership in the Congress to stop them. I have been a long time Republican supporter, but I am very concerned with what I’m seeing out of Congress these days, and if the GOP caves on gun control, well, election day is a good day to go hunting, isn’t it?

    Sincerely,

    Mr. Deep Red State

    Now if you’re a Democrat:

    Dear Rep. Seen Wearing Mossy Oak Every Election Season,

    I am writing you to express my concern about the gun control bill being pushed in Congress. I implore you to vote against these measures and show leadership in the Congress to stop them. I am a Democrat, but the gun issue is very important to me, and I will support a Republican who shows real leadership on the Second Amendment. I am very concerned with what I’m seeing out of Congress these days, and if you cave on gun control, I will return to being a Democratic voter.

    Sincerely,

    Mr. Deep Blue in Sea of Red

    Even if you don’t like them and will always vote against them, because the Dem is always pro-gun anyways, they don’t know who you voted for. Let them think your vote is up for grabs.

    1. At least on this side of the state (Near Pittsburgh) Ive yet to see the gun issue run party lines. There are plenty of good democrat challengers in PA that are very pro-gun. Some of the guys in power too.

    2. My message to my Representative and Senators and had a section telling them to make sure their colleagues understand that even though I’m not one of their constituents, that should they vote against my interests I’ll do everything legal in my power to see them unseated the next election.

    3. I already called Pat Meehan’s offices to let him know how I feel. I’ll have to stay on top of him and make sure he stays true.

      I called my local State Rep. and the response from his aide was that “We aren’t even considering any new gun control laws”. This wasn’t a surprise.

      I am moderately concerned at the National level and not concerned at all on the State level. (For PA at least).

      1. Absolutely. The left is going to try to hack the suburban GOP congressmen here to pieces. Meehan is one of the reps we need to keep strong pressure on.

  3. WRT to Silicon Valley, there is absolutely no more connected person than Ron Conway; if he devotes a fraction of that and his famous work ethic to this cause we can expect a lot of trouble from that corner.

    I can dig up more details if you’re like, but one anecdote for now:

    A particularly memorable moment was one night I was in the office at 11pm with our then director of finance, Alfred Lin (now COO of Zappos).

    We were at wit’s end because we had just lost our biggest customer opportunity which was with a large US telecom company…. this time, we were really in trouble because the customer was signing a long-term contract with our competitor later that week. We had already appealed to the President of the division; the only further escalation points were to the CEO or Chairman. We had already tapped out our VC contacts. If we lost this customer, as Alfred dryly pointed out, it was unlikely we’d be able to get our revenue over our fixed costs in any reasonable timeframe. I asked Alfred what about any of our angel investors, so we went through them and none seemed likely to be able to pull this off.

    Alfred said, “Well there is this one other investor, Ron Conway.” I didn’t know Ron at the time, and his investment was quite small. But we had nothing to lose by reaching out. So sometime after 11pm, I wrote Ron and essentially said: “hello, you don’t know me, I’m an executive at a company you’re an investor in, and we need a meeting—in person—with the CEO himself of this Fortune 50 company—this week—and if you can’t make this happen, hey that’s ok, but we may be going down—sorry.” Ron wrote back in literally 2 minutes and said, in what I have learned is Ron’s distinctive email style (immediate, short, all caps), “AM ON IT.” The next morning, Ron had done it. Tellme went on to win an eight figure contract that led to a nine figure contract. That’s a lot o’ money from a desperate email from someone he’d never met at 11pm.

    Tellme was eventually acquired by Microsoft for about $800mm….

  4. Anoth thing to watch out for: We’re doomed if we allow people like Alex Jones become our spokesman. Peirs Morgan actually made a brilliant move by inviting that hose head onto his show and allowing him to go off on a rant like a lunatic.

    1. What, precisely, can we do about this? Saying “if we allow” implies a degree of control we don’t have; outside of Fox and the editorial section of The Wall Street Journal the MSM are our implacable enemies.

      At least in Alex Jones’ case he’s a bit too confrontational and says a few too many inconvenient truths along with the insanity for the big guys to put him on the air, I strongly suspect. Morgan and his guests also don’t do their cause any good by talking about murdering Jones in the days following his appearance, which gives you an idea of the level of their respectability.

      1. We most certainly do have control. Our comments on blogs, news articles, YouTube videos, etc., will be used as validation.

  5. I would caution never to get into the mode of believing we have natural ideological allies in the RKBA battle. Better always to act as if nothing but the force of our votes is going to keep politicians in line.

    I don’t see the previous years as having been “safe” because no one in an administration was “willing to push gun control.” I always assume everyone in a position of power, backed up by government force, is just itching to push gun control. But, I think they assumed they would need our votes to get/keep what power they already had.

    Every time we throw our influence away by giving a politician a free ride based on nothing but “I support the 2A” (but also want to “enforce existing [anti-constitutional] laws) rhetoric — especially when they have a past record of speaking loudly in favor of anti-constitutional laws — we have been undercutting our own position. Wait and see if this time we have the chops to convince the pols we’re not the patsies we’ve insisted on being.

    1. With the notable exception of the Koch brothers, libertarians and paleoconservatives (e.g. Pat Buchanan) are our “natural ideological allies in the RKBA battle”; the problem is, there aren’t many of them and they have limited influence compared to even movement conservatives, who welcome gun grabbers like George Will.

      That’s one of the reasons we’re assuming the otherwise untested Rand Paul is going to be on our side in the battle. But there’s only one of him in the Congress, right?

      As for your general concerns, well, we’ve had a 12+ year lull; after this battle we’ll probably have real actions to score politicians on. Although in many cases we shouldn’t, i.e. Boehner should never even let an anti-gun bill come up for a vote, the Speaker and his team have that sort of power in the House.

  6. This is a big deal. They’ve got the White House pushing hard, a goal of a reasonable middle ground solution, big money and all the resources in the world, and top notch spokespeople.

    We have Wayne LaPierre and Alex Jones.

    1. We also have the modern Internet, Web 2.0 and all that, and that too is “a big f**king deal”.

      How many calls to Wal-Mart do we think were spawned by the previous thread’s comments and their getting spread to or linked to by other sites?

      Or of course our discussion and dissemination of strategy and tactics in this and other RKBA oriented sites?

      It’s very different from late 1994 (Clinton’s AWB); the World Wide Web’s critical turning point was the 1993 introduction of the Mosaic graphical browser. Before then we were limited to email and USENET, and with a fraction of the people currently on the net; it was also skewed towards liberal enclaves (e.g. universities).

      1. I agree with you that’s an important asset we did not have before. But the MSM won the election for Obama. They won it for him despite the right generally being pretty plugged in to new media.

        1. The MSM is estimated to give a Democratic candidate a 10-20 point advantage in any given Presidential election and they’re obviously all in on this struggle, but I’d be very careful trying to extrapolate from this election to what’s going to happen in this political battle, e.g.:

          In modern history sitting Presidents win unless they face primary challenges (which of course reflect dissatisfaction with the man).

          A big advantage to the above is that the President can focus all his effort on the other party’s candidate he thinks is going to win. Both Dole and Romney never recovered from this.

          Romney was a uniquely awful modern Republican candidate: NE liberal rich businessman who couldn’t fake being conservative, couldn’t go hammer and tongs against the very unpopular Obamacare, didn’t nationalize the election, which made a big difference down ticket, in fact, he’s not even particularly a politician, in that he parachuted in for this race and upon losing completely retired from the political scene. Family and religion are his main drivers, politics he did out of duty or whatever.

          Race was again a big factor in the election; I don’t think that’ll be true or at least as significant going forward in our fight.

          To put it in starkly racist terms, the nation is getting upset because a white guy killed a bunch of white children* and their white teachers and administrators with an assault rifle/weapon. Vs. the steady killings with handguns of blacks in much greater numbers (what fraction of the 500+ murdered in no legal handguns Chicago were black?).

          One can expect plenty of blacks to generally support this along with their fellow liberal whites, but beyond that I’m not sure.

          * One girl was half Puerto Rican.

          1. After the election, I heard a rumor that Romney didn’t want to be President. Ignoring the other icky issues you mentioned, I had two immediate, conflicting thoughts about this:

            1. He didn’t want to be President? No wonder why he lost!

            2. He didn’t want to be President, yet was running anyway? That’s the PERFECT type of person we want for President, all other factors being equal! Why, oh why, did we pass up on this opportunity?

            Of course, #2 doesn’t guarantee that the person would have been perfect, but even so, it’s nicer to have someone in office who doesn’t want to be there, than someone who’s itching to use the Power of the Office.

  7. I allowed my NRA membership to lapse after G.W. Bush was elected in 2000. I rejoined literally 5 minutes ago. I have contacted my house member and will shortly be contacting Corker and Alexander just to ensure that their thinking is right on this matter. I guess in other words fellas, I am all in.

    1. HT Drudge, the NRA has 100,000 new members after the shooting:

      The National Rifle Association has gained more than 100,000 new members in the last 18 days, the organization told POLITICO’s Playbook on Thursday.

      [ Evidently a MSNBC feature. ]

      The number of paid new members jumped from 4.1 million to 4.2 million in that time frame.

      “Our goal is to get to 5 million before this debate is over,” the NRA told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.

  8. Something tells me that the Anti-Freedom Crowd WANT Gun Control Legislation to Fail in the House this Term. Do not be surprised if they would then Target each Individual Representative who Voted “NO” with Political Destruction in 2014, using all the resources of the MSM and the Big Leftist Money Orgs like MoveOn, the Joyce Foundation, et.al.

    So one might tell one’s Rep /Senator to “Stand Firm,” but keep in mind they WILL have a Target on their Back from the Left. Do we want to place one on their Front?

    1. If gun control legislation doesn’t exit the House Judiciary Committee, or Team Boehner refuses to allow it to go to the floor for a vote, they won’t get that target on their “Front”.

      It’s left as an exercise for the reader if Team Boehner is that smart.

    2. From their point of view, they have nothing to lose. If they win a victory, they get the gun control they’ve wanted for a long time. They also will have achieved that victory with Republicans in the House having voted for it. In that case, we’ll put a target on their front.

      If those Republicans stand with us and vote no, they’ll put a target on their back in 2014, and make us work to defend those Republicans. Expect lefty groups to entice soft Republicans with that carrot, “If you vote ‘yes’ on this, we won’t spend money to defeat you in your district in 2014.”

      This really honestly isn’t about gun control. They mean to destroy the gun culture in a fell swoop. They mean to render the NRA impotent, and see them driven before them. Fresh off having trounced the Republican coalition, and independents who joined them, they are preparing the final blows to turn this country into a European-style social democracy. If they beat us here, and beat us in 2014, nothing, absolutely nothing is going to stop them. This will descend into open conflict between the feds and states. It’ll be 1861, not 1994.

      1. Don’t know if the last two can both happen. In that the Democrats are defending 20 Senate seats in 2014 and the passage of a nasty gun control law (or perhaps any) would make it extremely difficult to hold enough of them, they’re the ones that ran on the ticket with Obama, who appears to have no or negative effect when he’s not on the ticket.

        On the other hand, we’re pretty much only taking bets on how much Team Boehner will damage the Republican brand in the next two years….

        1. They can easily take back the House . . . . and tip toe around in a politically expedient way in 2014. Plus, they know that if they make themselves appear even the slightest bit vulnerable in 2014 the right will lose its mind again and overreach. And if they lose half the tough 2014 races, well . . . . they still control the Senate. And the economy will recover in plenty of time for 2016, at which point Hillary or someone else can stroll right in (with the burden of defending Senate seats on Republicans). And by the time that administration is done (2020, 2024) . . . they may well have a 7-2 or 9-0 majority on the Supreme Court.

          And we have no one to blame but the idiot abortion focused right wingers, the 3 per centers, and the tea party.

  9. I take a bit of a different view than you on our current situation. I think we are facing the biggest threat since the 94 ban but that it’s different this time. I think we are alot more powerful, more organized, and more widely supported than we were back then. Remember, back in 1994 anti-gunners were taking handgun bans and that stuff- Today all they really can take about is hi cap mags and assault weapons. this does not mean we shouldn’t keep pressure on them- we need to keep as much as possible- but I also think we need to do this somewhat “under the table”. We should continue contacting our representatives but not go too overboard on the “public statements”. The best thing for us is when the gun rights/control debate isn’t even talked about on the political stage. I think we should try to “lay low” (but not too low) for the next month or two. I think once the debt ceiling and the fiscal mess comes to bear this debate will be shoved to the back of the line and people will forget. The american public really doesn’t care much for the gun debate. Again, we should be contacting all of our reps and making sure they know their constituents are against gun control, but I don’t think we need anymore PR that makes us look like “out of touch nut jobs”. The liberal media is quite good and putting the spin on things….

  10. “This will descend into open conflict between the feds and the states” Civil War? Have we really come that far? Even the left, as naive and blind as many of them are, surely can see the effects of armed conflict would be catastrophic. I don’t want to believe we are ready to start shooting at one another.

    1. I don’t want to believe it either, but to use the misattributed Trotsky quote, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.“.

      And if the last century’s history is any guide, the Left is always ready to resort to violence to advance their agenda. Sometimes they were successful, often they were not; right now our political efforts are among other thins to keep their current explicit and implicit calls for violence to nothing more than (dangerous) speech.

    2. Yeah, Civil War with drone strikes. I’m just rolling my eyes over that one. Everybody owns guns but how many people own drones?

      1. Drone strikes are primarily used where a government doesn’t have enough boots on the ground to enforce its will. If our’s has to resort to them, it’s already lost.

    3. We’re on the way. If they win, the next step is to pressure your states to nullify the law. Obama, Congress and not even the Supreme Court are the final arbiters on what is and isn’t constitutional.

    4. I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but no, I doubt that the lefties really get the horribleness of civil war. If they think about it at all, they probably think they’ll have some SWAT raids and maybe a Waco or two, and that will be it. Remember, these are the people who don’t understand that passing a law doesn’t automatically change individuals’ behavior, or even change it at all.

      I think the truly dangerous attitude going on over there is the demonization of gun owners, as if we’re somehow arguing in favor of killing children. That seems to be how we got from increased background checks and mental health policies to bans and confiscation. When you have police talking among themselves about whether or not they’ll enforce a law like that, you are sowing the wind. And whatever else is going on, I don’t think most of them really mean to do that.

    5. Jerry,

      It’s a fundamental clash of philosophies and they’re being brought to the forefront. Between individual choice, freedom, consequences and opportunity versus being treated like a good collective member of society, told how to live, what is right and dare not go beyond the bounds.

      Not only do I believe portions of this country are ready, I believe it is inevitable if this continues. Give it a few months. If the gun controllers gain the upper hand, get enough of what they want and then proceed to enact it against the citizenry, oh yes, I expect the shooting to start.

      This situation, for reasons I cannot fathom if they’d just leave people alone, has the potential to fracture this country. It’s a natural outcome of the ideological lines, partisanship and abdication of responsibilities in Washington.

      I wake up ill wondering if today is the day history will mark as the next Lexington or Concord.

  11. I don’t support civil war because it would not be clear to me who the good guys were.

    If a civil war could be like the ideal, dream election — where the only difference between the choices was the gun issue — you could sign me right up. But as I commented the other day, there will be additional alignments and (as Harold noted) I don’t see any authentic libertarians positioned to take power and define the side of the good guys. I don’t have much enthusiasm for unseating leftists, just to empower fascists.

    All that said, I spent enough years fantasizing about the concept of revolt to have had some thoughts. Among them is, stop thinking in terms of boots-in-the-tall-grass, and think in terms of grabbing your opponents by the belt buckle, where their drones would blow their schwantzes off if they tried to use them. Think urban camo instead of matching the vegetation where they’ll bulldoze your remains. Think of viable urban guerrilla wars that were fought in the First World within the last few decades, and study those, rather than Third World contests in the jungles. (I can only think of one, but think for yourself — starting now.)

    1. That’s essentially been my argument against a lot of the calls for “shooting the bastards” Once you start that monster in motion, you have no idea how it’s going to end, and then what do you do with the people who elected this government in the first place? There have to be answers for that. Spitting the country might be the solution. But then who gets power in the states that left? I agree, unless it’s done with some degree of “republicanism,” in the traditional sense, you’re not going to know who the wrong side is, and the side likely to prevail is the one who will use the most violence the most ruthlessly.

      The American Revolution was quite extraordinary, in a lot of ways. I don’t see any reason to think it would play out the same way today.

      1. Shortly after our [fill in the blank, as I soon will], the French Revolution established a new, massively more violent totalitarian model for this sort of thing, making our Revolution, which was indeed that in many ways, really more a rebellion.

        In reference to Andy’s quandary, if the replacement “fascists” are authoritarian instead of totalitarian that might be an acceptable outcome, given the alternative. Our enemies on the Left are pretty clear about desiring to liquidate us, don’t know how many or what fraction of the population would be sent to reeducation camps but it wouldn’t be small.

        Don’t want to do the return to them, but if they aren’t firmly put in their place we’ll never have peace. Best to do that via ballot box backlash, but they sure don’t sound like they want to give us that alternative.

        1. The people talking about that kind of stuff are the kooks on the other side. Obama is a pretty run of the mill progressive lefty, and what he’s doing is pure politics. What he fails to understand is that the country isn’t Chicago. There are still people in this country that believe in things enough to die for them, and when you threaten those things, you’re treading in dangerous waters for the country. I support what Wyoming is doing, because it’s a way to raise the stakes without having the situation go completely pear shaped. The feds should be given the chance to back down, and I think they will. You’d end up in a situation where they’d pretty much agree not to enforce their laws outside of blue states. I have some posts in my head about why where here, that have to do with unwritten rules, etc.

          1. The people talking about that kind of stuff are the kooks on the other side. Obama is a pretty run of the mill progressive lefty, and what he’s doing is pure politics.

            “You bet your life” you’re sure of that; [insert required Goodwining here]? Kooks like the couple who hosted his political coming out party?

            Have you read The Road to Serfdom? Hayek makes a critical point in it about how the people like you envision Obama to be, once they get far enough in setting up their socialist paradise, are easy prey for the really ruthless types.

            He was speaking from pre-WWII history; since then, the Pax Americana has helped tamp that down, to the eternal whining of our Left, who never saw a Leftest killing field they weren’t willing to excuse. But, we, of course, are America; if it happens here….

            1. Not all socialists want to put people in reeducation camps. The kind of socialism they want here is more like the kind they have in many European countries. That’s not to say I want that here, but they want to smash our political power so they can bring it about. They don’t want our devotion to the Constitution, or to traditional American concepts of rights, to get in their way. I believe smashing our political will is their goal.

              If this were to turn violent, there are certainly forces on the left that would do it, and there are forces on the right that would be happy to do it to the other side, but by that time Obama will be a distant memory. Like another commenter said on another thread, the issue here is that Obama is lighting matches in the powder room. If that ends badly, he will be just as consumed by the awful forces unleashed as we will be.

              1. I’d agree with that to an extent. I think that’s what they want. But it won’t be what they get. We have some serious issues with bad apples in SWAT teams and such. There are some extreme uses of force in situations not requiring it.

                I do not see any disarmament of citizens ending well.

                1. [Not] Protecting Your Dog

                  Perhaps the worse problem, which is mentioned above, is that there is not a sufficient feedback mechanism to correct these problems. The Blue Wall almost always protects their own, no matter how bad, unless e.g. they do something that’s widely broadcast on TV … and you can be sure that won’t generally help us if things get ugly.

                  It will indeed not end will if it comes to pass; a thousand Ruby Ridges and Wacos, with enough of them reported on the Internet unless the government wants to shut down the nation (businesses really are dependent on it today).

    2. Fascists are leftists! Read Liberal Fascism by Bernie Goldberg it may open your eyes.

      The current administration are very akin to fascist, with racism, crony capitalsism, and most everything else that goes with it. The difference this time is that old white Christian guys are the scapegoats as well as the Jews.

  12. ‘The CEO of two companies that provide tactical weapons training and supplies to the military and police — and who is a former

    Tennessee police chief — said yesterday that if President Obama uses executive orders to ban assault rifles, “I’m going to start

    killing people.”’

    Watch!

    1. Sigh.

      Another example of letting the provocations of the enemy lead one into making a provocative mistake. In the follow up video even he recognizes that he should have kept his mouth shut.

      Right now the fight is purely political. Talk about violent resistance to gun control only gives the enemy ammunition to use against us. Note how that video clip appears on the SPLC site, not his own.

      I do believe now the primary goal of the current Obama gun control effort is not to impose draconian gun control, but instead to break the power of the NRA. And crazy talk is used by the enemy in their continuing campaign to demonize gun-owners as extremists who only exist at the margins of American life.

    2. That dude is a police chief?

      I saw that video earlier. I understand the rage, but all I could think was that guy’s going to have an unfriendly visit, and at the least surveiled for quite a bit.

      1. Bill, he was a police chief. And contractor in Iraq, etc. If you search for his name, you’ll find all sorts of interesting things.

        I took a class from him, nearly 10 years ago. His videos are pretty much the real him.

  13. I wrote this to local, state and federal.

    Hello,

    I urge you to reconsider your position, or vote against any more measures that restrict our freedoms. Bans on semi-automatics are ludicrous on their face. Punishing the law-abiding because of something a lunatic did is the most illogical nonsense I’ve ever come cross.

    Changing the law to more restrictive policies have done nothing other than allow criminals, who by definition, do not follow the law, to proliferate and victimize.

    Further, limits on purchases of firearms is farcical. Not only are they a right, people like to collect them for historic reasons, athestic reasons, or the variety of uses that each are suited to.

    There has not been a single registration scheme that does not eventually go back on it’s promise of no confiscation.

    If you and your families are worthy of guarded protection, why are our children and families not?

    Government is spending more than just money in deficit. Trust is earned.

    Thank you,

  14. Obama does not have as much favor in his crowd as he used to. The haircut everybody is getting in their paychecks have soured a lot of support and it is not being reported.
    The comments I have heard from very loyal (but very uniformed) voters can be summarized by “F*** that Motherf***er Obama. He promised we wouldn’t get taxes.”
    I know it is not a huge advantage, but it also means that the advertising effort will not have the same resonance. What I am afraid of (Tin Foil Warning) is that they would generate false calls, emails and faxes to dupe members of congress into voting the wrong way.
    Remember Florida 2000 and the phone bank controversy.

  15. The people who passed Obamacare in the face of 80% of the country not wanting it are lining up on the side of gun control. Are more people than that opposed to gun conrol? I don’t think so… A couple weeks ago when Obama kicked the can down the road with a task force I felt pretty good about things, I’ve totally changed my outlook now that it is clear they’re going to push hard, and part of that is because many of my gun owning friends aren’t taking this seriously.

    1. A lot of people in 1994, including me, didn’t take it seriously until there was a ban. It blows my mind. We’ve seen this before. It’s happened before. And we have a much more radical President this time.

    2. There’s a big difference between the two, depending on the severity of the gun ban. Nationalized health care has been fashionable for a long time, and more recently was realized to be a roach motel for republics, get it in place and you permanently change the relationship between citizen/subject and the government. The nation becomes a social democracy, and a lot of oxygen gets sucked up dealing with the system, which by definition has life and death power over the people.

      And the potential for soft graft is nearly infinite; Tony Blair’s New Labour doubled the U.K.’s NHS budget, and as far as I can tell very little of that money went to actual health care providers. Lots was wasted on failed IT projects, lots and lots on bureaucrats of course, etc. And the horror stories just keep getting worse.

      Gun control is also a necessary thing for the people who like to set up these sorts of systems, although if possession bans aren’t on the table it’s also a long term game. But it’s quite not as essential, or at least the former will help set up the conditions for the latter given time. Well, enough time that impatient people like DiFi will have died/doddered off the national stage, it takes a generation or two I think for nationalized health care to really work its corrosive “magic”.

  16. Sabastian, if you want to think that that guy in the(no longer) white house is “…a pretty much run of the mill progressive lefty…” then your ignorance of his upbringing is beyond monumental.
    His mother was a communist, whoever was his father likewise, all of what we know of those who raised him indicates that they were all also either hard core socialists or communists.
    But if what you wrote makes you feel better, whatever works…

    1. “(no longer) white house”

      What’s that supposed to mean? If it means what I think it means, forgive me if I don’t take the rest of your comment seriously. I don’t take kindly to racists.

      1. Well, Pink or Red works for me, but I suspect that’s not what the author means.

        Which is not to say we shouldn’t dismiss the racist dimensions of all this (I refuse to use the insane modern PC term “racalist”),

  17. Just a note of clarification. Andy B. stated: “I don’t have much enthusiasm for unseating leftists, just to empower fascists.” Fascists were leftists. The term “Nazis” was short for National Socialist German Workers Party. Only communists (i.e., extreme left-wing) could ever call fascists right wingers. Equating fascists with the right wing is one of the great lies that the MSM likes to push in order to cover for their guys.

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