The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Bitter is covering the NSSF summit. Conclusion from the introduction to the report:
So, the webcast is over and there was absolutely no statement about these just being ideas. Like I said, if I were watching that with out no other information from NSSF, I would believe that this document was their new gospel.
So does this mean the NSSF is now adopting action items that will marginalize the handgun shooting sports? I think this is beyond misguided, it’s just plain stupid.
If you open carry in Wisconsin, and have been harassed as a result of it, Milwaukee magazine is looking to do a story on this. I would be very careful talking to the press. In fact, this is something where state leaders in the movement really need to step up and make sure the media is getting the right message, and coaching people on how to deal with them. Treating the media like friends of gun owners can turn into an embarassing mistake very quickly.
Don’t take a box of ammo to your buddy in Russia. American attitudes toward guns are rather unique in the world. Guns in Russia, for instance, are heavily regulated or prohibited in many cases. Guns in Mexico are flat out illegal, despite the fact that Mexico has their own version of the second amendment. There have been folks who have been prosecuted at the border of Mexico for having a single piece of ammunition floating around in their car.
Of course, both Mexico and Russia have violent crime rates that are stratospheric compared to the United States, and I’m also told that 50 dollars will cause the Mexican authorities to suddenly remember they have a right to keep and bear arms. But the anti-gun folks get around that bit of inconvenience by arguing that those countries aren’t “civilized.” You see, civilized countries are only the ones that ban guns and have a lower rate of crime than the United States.
It looks like a bipartisan bill is being introduced in Congress that will making it a bit easier for the firearms and ammunition makers to make payments on their Pittman-Robertson tax obligations, which go to wildlife and conservation funding, as well as maintenance of public shooting ranges:
Earlier this year the industry marked an important milestone in its longstanding support of wildlife conservation. Manufacturers have since 1991 contributed more than $3 billion dollars to fund wildlife conservation through the payment of the federal excise tax. Since the inception of the excise tax in 1937, more than $5 billion dollars has been collected.
That’s a powerful reason hunters ought to be very interested in the health of the other shooting sports. Shooters pay for a lot of wildlife conservation that benefit hunters through the payment of these excise taxes.
One gun a month passed the New Jersey Assembly by a vote of 47-28 and 4 abstentions. The vote was held around 6:00 tonight.
Bitter and I both talked with one of National Shooting Sports Foundation‘s public relations guys, the same guy SayUncle talked to, and he was emphatic that NSSF does not endorse the conclusions of that report. This report was meant to throw out ideas, and the purpose of the summit was to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
From my point of view, I emphasised that NSSF needed to be careful. In the age of the Internet, it’s very difficult to have much of any control over the means and rapidity that information is disseminated. The old Internet adage that “Information wants to be free” very much applies here.
While I understand and agree the industry needs to be presented with new data and ideas, and debate the implications, it needs to, nonetheless, be very careful about what it puts its name on.  There was no indication in the report that the action items in the report weren’t endorsed by NSSF. Add that to the fact that there were numerous items in there, because of poor choices of language, would be good fuel for the gun control movement, and you have a recipe for a big problem. And that’s not even mentioning the damage that can occur from within the gun rights movement itself.
So I am glad to hear that NSSF is distancing themselves from these ideas. I’m as much of a handgun shooter as I am a rifle shooter, so I appreciate that others in NSSF recognize the importance of those parts of the shooting community, and don’t seem ready to throw handgunners under the bus.
Bitter talks about the handgun numbers, and notes that 37,665 of 55,000, or about 66% of NRA certified instructors are certified in handgun disciplines. I would also add a thought to this mix. One of the top reasons cited in this study for people leaving the shooting sports, and becoming inactive, was a lack of places to shoot. Why on earth would you recommend setting aside handguns for rifle disciplines when rifle shooting typically involves an outdoor range, with a lot of land, and ranges typically measured in the hundreds of yards? Few urban and suburban areas are supporting outdoor ranges and clubs, and the few that do exist are usually private, and not easily available to novice shooters. I can name at least 5 ranges within 30 miles of me that are indoor pistol ranges, and all of them are public, and offer gun safety instruction to new shooters.
My shooting club, which is lucky enough to have one of the few 200 yard ranges in a suburban area, does handgun silhouette because we don’t have the room to do rifle silhouette. IHMSA big bore goes out to 200 yards, and the smallbore shooters only out to 100. Airgun disciplines only out to 18 yards. NRA rifle silhouette goes out to 600 yards. NRA High-Power also goes out to 600, and even to 1000 for certain matches. How many places have room for that?
If the fundamental problem in the shooting sports is that populations are becoming increasingly urbanized, then the handguns sports are exactly what we should be emphasizing. There’s room to do that kind of shooting even in a heavily urbanized environment. The City of Philadelphia, for instance, has several active pistol ranges. There are perhaps a dozen of them in the suburbs. I can count on my fingers the number of ranges that can handle rifle and shotgun sports, and most of those are private clubs, which are more difficult for newbs to get into. Bitter is right. The times are a changing, and some people need to get over it.
Jacob points to an awful bit of chicken little in the media, in regards to Heller jeopardizing local gun regulations. He points out how the Sullivan Act came into being. Also worth pointing out is that New York’s crime rates were sky high in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the gun laws the AJC is crediting with lowering crime rates. The Sullivan Act was passed in 1911! I guess it just took a century for it to start to work? Dream on.
This is all just speculation, but interesting. First from Dave Hardy, who says that it’s good news if Scalia writes the opinion, as appears likley. Second is from Bitter, and third the Volokh Conspiracy, here and here.
Michael Bane talks about the happenings at the NSSF Summit, and I couldn’t agree more:
We have achieved these victories not by “staying the course,” but by taking the battle to our enemies. We have gotten here not by “playing nice,” but by doing what Americans do — standing up for our beliefs and speaking our minds and hearts. We are succeeding because we have stopped watering down our message and trying to pander to the very people who would strip us of our rights.
Go read the whole thing. Michael has more experts from the issued reports, and comments on them thusly:
I don’t have to tell my regular readers how wrong-headed and profoundly incorrect these “action items” are. They are old school the worst way, a distillation of policies that have not only failed us in the past but are in fact the very policies that are responsible for nearly destroying us. “Hide, hide!” “Play nice!” Be something that you’re not, and maybe everyone will love you!
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Action items like these are a proven path to failure…and in our case, oblivion.
Yep. That’s why it’s important to squash these ideas like bugs, because if they start infecting the movement, we’ll end up like Britain and Australia, whos sportsmen went down the very road these action items are advocating. We cannot feed the misconception that handguns, or any other guns that are the demons du-jure of the anti-gun movement, have no legitimate sporting purpose, and downplay their role in lawful self-defense.