Jim Geraghty has this to say about recent incidents in the name of #BlackLivesMatter:
My fellow men and women of the Right… yes, we have our bad days. Yes, there are times somebody on our side embarrasses us or does something stupid. But we can all thank our lucky stars we don’t have idiots, losers, and misanthropic rage-mongers like this claiming to act in the name in our cause.
You sure about that Jim? The thing that pisses me off about the current situation in Washington State is that we need people who engage in peaceful civil disobedience. We need people who are willing to engage in some Irish Democracy. I have no beef, in principle, with the “We Will Not Comply” crowd. But why would any sensible person want to live under a horrendously bad law when there’s an opportunity to make it just a bad law? To me, you take ground back where you can.
I get that a lot of people are unhappy with Alan Gottlieb because of the Manchin-Toomey deal. I was not happy with him after Manchin-Toomey either. It was a bad deal, and we had the votes to kill it, so we killed it. We were very lucky that Gottlieb’s endorsement didn’t cost us that vote, because it was very close. My fear at the time was some of our weaker Senators would use his seal of approval as pro-gun cover to switch their vote to a “yes”. I think it’s fair to criticize this move.
But I think trying to shit on other hard-working activists who are trying to take as much ground back right now, because they think they can get it, is beyond the pale. Taking back lost ground is not compromise. Even the simple measure of exempting transfers to Washington LCCP holders would destroy I594’s usefulness as a scheme to register all firearms. I don’t see the logic in not seeking even a simple exemption like that if the votes could be mustered for it in the legislature.
The law doesn’t cease becoming the law just because you choose to ignore it. They aren’t going to arrest people en mass engaging in political protest. They aren’t going to arrest someone who transfers a firearm to a friend. What they will do is take cases on the margin, and make examples out of those folks to intimidate the rest of the scofflaws. This is not a plea to comply with the law, just a dose of reality for how it’s going to work. If we can take action now to ease the law to make fewer scofflaws, we ought to.
There is for many on the right a complete lack of understanding about the value of strategy and subtle tactics. Too many think that the only proof that a person truly cares about the cause is to behave like a belligerent asshole in public. I don’t know how many more failures brought on by stupid stunts it will take before these dummies realize the error of their ways.
Gottlieb’s endorsement is going to come back to haunt all of us. Count on it.
Yeah, it would be one thing to stand in a calm, dignified manner with a slung rifle, just showing your presence and the fact that you exist and care passionately about the issue. Handling it, loading it, holding it at low ready is another matter altogether and will always be divisive.
If the pro-gun side is smart about this, we have a good chance at improving our situation. The large majority of counties in Washington are very gun friendly. The vote map demonstrates that extremely clearly.
As your last paragraph says, they won’t arrest all the people at a demonstration, they’ll pick them off one by one, with a carefully selected first few cases to cast gun ownership in a very bad light.
Notice that reducing paperwork to purchase/transfer might provide another reason to encourage casual gun owners to get a permit-to-carry.
Not that this is good reason to have a background-check-for-everyone-but-Permit-Holders, but it is a cup of lemonade to make out of that particular bag of lemons.
Politicians promises and statements of intent are
about as valuable and dependable as a popcorn fart
in a high wind offending a pig.
We did not lose our gun rights overnight. We are not going to get them back overnight either. Learn a lesson from the anti gun folks. They take what they can get when they can get it. A little here and little there and soon it starts adding up. We can do it too.