The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Apparently the official hotel of the 2008 2A Blog Bash is being demolished:
Over the years, overnight guests at the Executive Inn have included the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Bob Hope and Presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
They forgot the most famous guests of all. The gun bloggers! And I’ll bet we got a lot drunker there than any of those other pikers. Well, OK, maybe not the Rolling Stones.
Ward leaders in Philadelphia, and our illustrious Governor, are worried they won’t have enough “street money” to pay volunteers. I should note that in suburban wards, our volunteers are volunteers. They do the job because of a sense of civic duty, so that an important function of our republic can be carried out.
ACORN is a shining example of what happens when you pay people to achieve a certain result, and the practice of paying “street money” is an idea who’s time should have gone. I will actually have a lot more respect for Barack Obama if he doesn’t pay up, even if it means he loses Pennsylvania. If people don’t care enough about their candidate, or care enough about running elections without having to be paid, they can stay the hell home. Ed Rendell is worried that could mean the Democrats lose. There are things that are more important than that.
Governor Blunt hosted a conference call a few minutes ago with several gun bloggers. Mostly it was to talk about the upcoming election. Not much in the way of news to me, since I’m already pretty familiar with the campaign’s talking points on guns. Several bloggers expressed concern with John McCain’s record on guns, and indicated they didn’t trust him. Blunt’s response was basically that you can trust McCain a hell of a lot more than you can trust Barack Obama. This might surprise you, but I actually trust Barack Obama on the gun issue. I trust that he’s going to screw gun owners every chance he gets. Either way, hopefully other bloggers took better notes than I did, and I’ll be able to update this post with some more detailed coverage.
The one question I asked was what kind of activity the Governor saw from ACORN in Missouri. He indicated it was substantial and worrisome. He doesn’t agree with those who suggest that registration fraud is not worrisome, since that invariably is done in order to commit fraud at the ballot box. Missouri indicted 12 ACORN employees from 2006 and 2007, before this current fiasco got started. ACORN’s activities are a serious concern to me. With several states already saying they can’t ensure a fair election, this is going to seriously affect people’s confidence in this election. We’ve already had too many elections where that’s been an issue, and I worry another doubtful election will rip the country apart. With Obama hiring $800 grand worth of ACORN services for this election, if this is the kind of change he’s selling, he can keep it.
I absolutely love her new banner graphic.
Looks like ACORN has gotten into some hot water back home in Delaware County. ACORN is saying it’s just one bad apple. There seem to be an awfully lot of bad apples then.
Once again, the local radio rag started out a story on McCain’s appearance in Bensalem with “Despite a double digit lead by the Obama campaign …” Well, I’ve already been telling folks that McCain’s internal polling shows it within 2 points. Now we also know that Obama’s internal polling is showing the same thing. No wonder Ed Rendell is nervous.
This is psychological warfare — meant to disillusion McCain supporters, and supress turnout for McCain. If it’s a double digit race, why bother right? Except it’s not. If I know what the internal polling says, you can bet the media does too. But reporting that wouldn’t help Obama.
The Citizens’ Rifle & Revolver Club has managed to get a piece in the Trenton Times highlighting, in a positive way, their shooting sports program:
If you have been thinking of looking into the shooting sports, there is no better time to do it than on Sundays Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 when Citizens’ Rifle & Revolver Club will be holding its annual open house/fun shoot. Citizens’ has been a fixture at Route 571 in Plainsboro for close to 80 years. Carol Katona, who has been president of the club for 15 years and just won another term as president in the club’s recent elections, told me the basic premise of the club is and has always been to promote safety and enjoyment of the shooting sports.
This is probably the best public relations type program shooting clubs can do. Even if you don’t make a new shooter out of someone, people at least can come in, and see people enjoying the shooting sports safely, and be relieved of some of their ignorance about firearms, and the people who use them. If clubs are pulling off successful programs in New Jersey, and getting the media to help promote it, it can be successful anywhere.
This Libertarian candidate is upset that NRA doesn’t endorse Libertarians:
Throughout this campaign I have let my constituents know that I was a NRA member and supporter and have expressed this on my Web site and my campaign material. This only shows that the NRA is either run by or scared of the Republican Party.I spent 27 years as a Republican only to find out that they had abandoned me. Now it is the National Rifle Association that has also done the same. Who is it today that will represent America?
Well, I wouldn’t say the NRA is too scared of the Republican Party, considering this year they have endorsed quite a number of Democrats, including this latest one in Texas. But Libertarian Candidate Teddy Fleck needs to grasp some important political realities here.
One, Libertarians don’t win. If every gun voter voted Libertarian, they still wouldn’t win, and both major parties would quickly abandon gun rights because they have nothing to gain by supporting it. Gun owners are one interest among many, and we don’t have political power outside of acting in coalition with other interests. If every gun owner voted as a gun owner, on gun rights alone, we might have something. But that’s not going to happen.
Two, most gun owners are not Libertarian. Many have libertarian leanings, but I can count on my fingers the number of philosophically Libertarian gun owners I’ve run into doing my grassroots work. I’ve run into more liberal Democrats. I’ve run into one person who is voting for Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate, and exactly no one who said they are voting for Bob Barr. Not a scientific study, but if there’s energy and enthusiasm out there for Libertarian and other third party candidates, I’m not seeing it.
Three, most gun owners are not single issue voters, despite my best attempts to make them. I’ve found more Obama supporters than all the third party candidates combined. Many Obama supporters are aware of his record on guns, but are voting other issues this election, like jobs and the economy, union loyalties, or various other issues. Further dividing the gun vote to third party candidates who don’t stand a chance isn’t going to accomplish anything other than weakening our political power.
Did I mention Libertarians don’t win? When you’re an issue organization, maximizing your political influence is the number one goal. Ideological concerns take a back seat to that. You focus on the gun issue, and develop a strategy to maximize your influence, since third parties have little or no influence, there’s nothing to be gained there. That might piss some people off, but that’s reality.
Toronto officials want people to give up their nasty, brutish habit of marksmanship, if you want to point something at objects and pull a trigger, they have an alternative for you:
The amnesty program, Pixels for Pistols, is a joint endeavour with the 26-store Henry’s camera chain, based on Church St. in Toronto. For four weeks, Toronto residents who hand over a gun, legal or not, will receive a digital camera, either a Nikon Coolpix S52 or a Coolpix P60, listed at $230 and $190 on the Henry’s website. The offer includes photography lessons.
Fortunately, some gun owners in Ontario already know they are sad, evil individuals, and are taking steps at cleansing their souls:
Among the callers was John Hope, who keeps a trigger lock on the 9-mm Beretta stowed in his Bracebridge home. He says he’s eager to give up the gun so it doesn’t land in the wrong hands – a criminal or suicidal teenager, say. Since he can’t trade it for a camera, he now plans to throw it into the middle of a lake.
Argh! Sell that thing to a collector who would value it. Restricted firearms in Canada are tough to come by. It would have been like someone tossing a fine pre-ban AR-15 in a lake during the height of our assault weapons ban.
They are getting more strict:
The revised firearms and swords possession control law would ban the possession of daggers and other double-edged knives whose blades are 5.5 centimeters or longer, and swords and spears with blades of 15 cm or longer. At present, one is prohibited from owning swords, knives and spears whose blades are 15 cm or longer.
The bill would also expand the scope of a ban on gun ownership to people with such records of such criminal action as stalking and domestic violence as well as bankrupt people and those feared to commit suicide.
American gun owners should note that, despite Japan’s astronomically low crime rate, the government of Japan is not saying “Well, our controls work well — we live in a very safe society.” No, when the weapons control laws fail, as they always will, the answer will be to squeeze tighter and tighter.