First, Jim Shepherd from The Shooting Wire. And also Michael Bane. I would like to thank both these gentlemen for taking bloggers seriously, and for spending time with us. I’d also like to thank Michael for the drinks with Todd Jarrett on Friday. Bloggers are coming into the big time, and I’m very glad to know each and every one of the Blog Bash attendees. They are among the finest group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Year: 2008
Joyce Getting Behind Gun Control in Pennsylvania
Joyce has made a $350,000 grant to CeaseFire Pennsylvania:
The Chicago-based Joyce Foundation is granting the organization the money over two years to aid its bid to build a statewide, grass-roots response to gun violence, CeaseFirePA’s executive director Joe Grace said.
That’s big money aimed square at gun owners in Pennsylvania, and Joe Grace has demonstrated that he’s a capable and effective leader of CeaseFire PA. This isn’t going to stop, and we need to have our A game on.
Jill Porter on The Rule of Law
AHSA in Lousiville
Last year in St. Louis, AHSA paid people to stand in front of the NRA exhibit hall and protest. This year they took out a full page ad in a local Louisville paper, and are drumming up some local media coverage:
What you didn’t hear is that many gun enthusiasts balk at the NRA’s devotion to the Republican Party. They resent the NRA for appropriating their values, radicalizing their views and, perhaps, jeopardizing their ability to own guns in the future.
“In many circles, the NRA stands for the National Republican Association,” said Bob Ricker, executive director of the American Hunters & Shooters Association, which last month endorsed Obama for president.
We stand by the party that poops on us the least. There are plenty of fine pro-gun Democrats that NRA endorses, and that number is increasing. If Bill Richardson had received the nod from the Democrats, this would be a very different race. If Bob Ricker wants to go off and endorse Democrats that want to take away guns from hunters and shooters, that’s his prerogative, but I don’t see how that makes his organization anything other than a false flag.
The AHSA was started two years ago by Ricker, a former NRA assistant general counsel and longtime gun industry lobbyist, and Ray Schoenke, an avid hunter and former Washington Redskins lineman who ran unsuccessfully in 1998 for the Democratic nomination to be governor of Maryland [once donated $5000 dollars to Handgun Control Inc.]
There, now it’s accurate.
The AHSA has signed up about 25,000 dues-paying members over two years, Ricker said. That pales in comparison to the 4 million members of the NRA, which had a 135-year head start. But Ricker notes that the NRA’s 4 million is only a fraction of the nation’s estimated 60 million gun owners.
And I eagerly await pulling AHSA’s form 990 to verify these 25,000 dues paying members.
Tyrant
Harsh words from C. Scott Shields for Mayor Nutter:
NRA attorney C. Scott Shields later accused Nutter of being a “tyrant” willing to cast gun-shops owners in a false light. “To suggest that they’re engaging in unlawful trafficking of handguns is outrageous,” Shields said.
The city ultimately hopes to take this fight to a higher court to provoke reconsideration of a 1996 state Supreme Court ruling that killed the city’s last attempt at gun-control laws.
City Solicitor Shelley Smith yesterday said that she’d be ready with an appeal in a week to 10 days if Greenspan rules against the city.
Earlier in the article
Nutter said that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to know some legally purchased guns are later resold to people who are prohibited from owning them.
So Nutter thinks having lost in the state legislature, he can just decree Colosimo’s and The Firing Line to be criminals? Well, that pretty much fits the definition of tyrant if you ask me, which in ancient Greek meant a ruler who seized power without legal right.
Nutter Targeting Philly Gun Shop
Nutter is dragging Philadelphia gun shops into this now.
“These gun traffickers are not going to stop us from keeping the citizens of Philadelphia safe,” Nutter said in a news conference before an afternoon court hearing on the five laws he signed into law last month. One of them limits gun purchases to one a month in an effort to curb “straw purchases,” in which individuals buy multiple firearms for resale to felons and others forbidden to own guns.
I would be talking to a lawyer right now about a libel suit against the Mayor. Good thing is, the lead attorney appears to hint at the possibility:
C. Scott Shields, who spent the afternoon arguing the case against the laws in a City Hall courtroom, called Nutter’s words “shocking.”
“He may be inviting separate legal action for casting Colosimo’s and the Firing Line in a false light,” Shields said. “To suggest that they’re engaged in illegal trafficking of handguns is outrageous.”
The three ring circus in that city continues. But why isn’t Mayor Nutter talking about this? Why isn’t the media forcing him to address it?
Bradylaunch
As some of you may know, The Brady Campaign linked to me yesterday. I have taken a careful measurement of their power to drive traffic with Google Analytics. Here are the results.
The Brady Campaign’s main site drove a total of four hits, three of which were me clicking through the link on their site. The cross post at the Huffington Post drove a total of six click throughs, five of which were actually unique. Just for contrast, SayUncle and Dave Hardy were my top two referrers with 165 visits driven my way. You can see the screen shots of here for Brady Blog and here for Huffpo. As you can see there, Brady Blog and HuffPo were my 40th and 29th highest referrer respectively, scoring below most of the pro-gun blogs who are driving traffic my way via their blog rolls rather than direct links in posts. When you’re getting beat by blog rolls, that’s a rocket to the moon, let me tell you.
UPDATE: David had the same experience.
New Graphic Contest
I was talking to Dave Kopel at the Annual Meeting about the fact that my headlining banner is getting long in the tooth. I tend to agree. Truth be told, if I could go back, I would probably change the name of the blog too, but it’s too late for that. I never thought anyone would actually take this seriously.
So I’m going to have a contest to see if anyone can submit a headline banner close to what I’m looking for. I am looking for a drawing, rather than a picture, but my idea is an AR-15, with a muzzle flash (rather embellished flash) and a snowflake in the flash. If anyone wants to have a stab at it, send the graphic to my address listed in the top corner. Click on the graphic to make it readable.
Disarmed for McCain
David pokes some fun at the McCain event held last Friday in Louisville. Yeah, I disarmed for McCain. Several people chose to watch from the NRA press office, where they had a feed, and you could be armed. Before the McCain event, I was open carrying around the press office and the exhibit hall. No one seemed to be too bothered, including the Louisville Police, the Secret Service, or the authorized journalists. David opines in the comments:
Blaming it all on the SS rings hollow. I believe NRA had a choice of saying “No thanks–do it all via TV feed if that’s your position,” and McCain also had the option of telling the SS who the boss is–which I cede is extremely unlikely.
If McCain and NRA wanted to turn some of this around, he would show up for an impromptu photo op at their range next to armed members. Does anyone honestly believe randomly present members would pose a danger? Because if so, the gun controllers argument that none of us can be trusted must be true. And quite the opposite statement would be made about the trustworthiness of peaceable gun owners if he did–a real in-your-face to the gungrabbers who portray NRA members as violent lunatics.
McCain was pretty unlikely to call off the secret service, but David is correct that he could have done so if he really wanted to. Given the speech he gave, it’s not too surprising he didn’t go out of his way to act like a true friend to gun owners. NRA then had a choice of telling McCain to bugger off, pissing off a lot of ticket holders, or just dealing with the Secret Service security. It’s one of those cases you’re not going to make everyone happy.
I also don’t think the security reflects too much on NRA members, because anyone could have gotten into that forum if they had a scalped ticket, or just outright forged credentials, which wouldn’t have been that hard for someone determined to get close enough to McCain to take a shot. Secret Service security centers around controlling the forum, rather than being concerned about specific individuals, unless they have a reason to be.
Based on what I was told, Secret Service was worried about the blogger creds, since people were being issued press credentials who weren’t actually press, but that problem was ironed out by NRA before we started arriving. There was definitely a lot of security theater going on, but in general, I thought the Secret Service was pretty accomodating of the fact that McCain was appearing in a location with thousands of armed people.
Lots of Good Stuff
Over at The Arizona Rifleman. Just keep scrolling. Next year’s NRA Annual Meeting, and Second Amendment Blogger Bash will be in Phoenix, so hopefully this will end up being an attending blog at next year’s event.