The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
I am sorry for the light posting today. I honestly just don’t have it in me today. Some people don’t seem to be happy that I banned a reader. I’m kind of curious what people think:
[poll=4]
I do promise I’ll tire of my new polling plugin eventually.
I don’t take banning users lightly, and despite repeated statements of disrespect from this particular commenter, I actually still feel bad about doing this. I have always wanted this blog to be open to all points of view, even ones that I find personally distasteful. I have accepted many points of view here, and have been very tolerant to people even taking an unfavorable view of me and the things I say. But there are lines that should not be crossed, and this crosses it:
Fuck you people. I get all this heartburn because I asked how NRA is treating someone to a concert that is sponsored by Gander Mountain?
No wonder you are from Waurika, that is where Comanche used to send all our mentally disabled, Bitch.
I was asking a serious question, but you assholes are so goddamned fragile you can’t answer it because you think it is some kind of attack.
Hell! It may have been, but if it was, I wasn’t aware of it. I really wanted to know about the mechanics of it.
Ok, you have provided me with an answer to a question that has been niggling at me for a while now. The answer to the question is: no! you are not small l libertarians, nor are you second amendment advocates, nor are you civil rights advocates, nor are you political conservatives (forget it, none of you are smart enough to know what that is), nor are you interested in procuring or reacquiring rights that have been lost or truncated over the years. You are simply people who like to feel important at no cost and have decided the best way to do that is to ride popular or semipopular coattails that have a chance of ascending to acceptance. You are merely cheerleaders with no loyalty to any team as long as you are paid. In your cases the pay is acceptance of a larger group .
Did I mention fuck you?
Oh, by the way, I will be in Comanche, Ok 0ver Easter. Bring your boyfriend, we’ll talk.
Comment by straightarrow on February 25th, 2008
I’ve been very tolerant of straightarrow up until that comment, despite his generally nasty disposition. I draw the line at attacking my girlfriend and making veiled threats against the host. I did not warn him. I will not lecture him like he is some kind of misbehaving school child, I just took what I thought was appropriate action. Since straightarrow is so insistent that I am nothing but a mouthpiece for the NRA, from now on, anytime he visits my blog, it will redirect him directly to NRA. No need for him to receive his propiganda filtered through this place, when he can get it right from the source.
UPDATE: I’ve determined through logs that I have one, possibly two other readers on the same IP subnet as straightarrow. Since these readers have never commented, I will deal with this issue differently, and will disable the redirect.
Last week Traction Control did a great fisking of John Rosenthal, board member of American Hunters and Shooter Association (and also a founder of Stop Handgun Violence, a Massachusetts gun control group) claims of NRA lies.
Now Bitter rips apart another AHSA press release claiming all manner of things about the NRA. Give both a read. It’s important to make sure gun owners are not fooled by these shucksters.
It’s been scheduled. October 9th through the 12th. I have every intention to re-attend this year, but won’t know for sure until later in the year. I work for a biotech that’s been running off vulture capital for the past seven years, so you never know when I might find myself unemployed. Makes long term planning a bear, but I should be able to make it. I hope you can too.
It looks like Alex Tabarrok doesn’t think gun buybacks make a whole lot of sense from an economic point of view. Dave Hardy relates his own story. My story is that once, when Philadelphia used to do these things, I ran into a couple of Pink Pistol guys at the range who had managed to purchase two Kalashnikovs with the money they had made from saving up old junk guns in anticipation of the next gun buyback. The organization that does these in Philly has since wised up, and on longer hands out cash for guns. You can, however, get a gift certificate for sneakers, or other such non-cash items, the value of which depends on the type of gun turned in. No doubt this will keep collectors away, but I would imagine it keeps pretty much everyone else away too. If Philadelphia ever decides to hand out cash again, I have a few worthless pieces of junk I’d be happy to get rid of.
You can find it here.
On Friday, May 16th NRA will thank not only NRA members, but also the whole Louisville community with a free concert featuring Grammy award-winning artist John Michael Montgomery. This event is sponsored by Gander Mountain and hosted by Louisville’s Fourth Street Live.
With an estimated 60,000 attendees and more than 400 exhibits, this year’s Annual Meetings and Exhibits promises to be among the best in NRA’s 137-year history. Leading firearm manufacturers will display the firearm industry’s latest products. Various hunting and shooting accessories, and an extensive private collection displayed by NRA-affiliated gun collector clubs, will fill acres of convention space.
Aside from having no idea who John Michael Montgomery is, it sounds pretty good to me. I will be attending as part of the Second Amendment Blog Bash, but everyone should consider coming out. You can visit nraam.org for more details.
Interesting conservation going on over at the Du Toit place.
I think the big difference between our points of view is that you haven’t given up the fight, while I have. -Tamara K.
I think that pretty much the issue in a nutshell. Kim’s answer to that is classic Kim:
And I never will. This is the last place on Earth where freedom lives, no matter how much you think it’s become corrupted and not worth fighting for.
Throwing up your hands and surrendering just because the struggle might seem hopeless… sorry, that’s just not my style.
I’ll give up when the boot’s on my chest and the bayonet’s at my throat—and not one moment earlier.
And even then, I’ll spit on the boot.
I’m actually not that convinced it has to come to that. Polls show that somewhere between 10 and 20% of voting age Americans have libertarian sentiments.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, and if you can tap that resource, you can have a big influence on political outcomes. The problem here is twofold.  The first is with the voting public itself. People won’t typically spontaneously organize for political action, and libertarian minded people are typically horses that don’t really want to be lead to water. Their philosophy can best be summed up as “leave me the hell alone”, which makes organizing them a challenge compared to people who have something to gain through the political process. The second fold of this problem is with the activists, because every political movement needs a dedicated core set of activists to organize people to action.
Over the years I’ve come to understand libertarianism as a philosophical movement and not a political one. The people who would form this dedicated core of activists have more energy to argue with each other, and to attend to the philosophical purity of the movement, than they do for getting their ideas out into the political arena where they can start to make a difference.  But there is hope.
If you look at the gun rights movement, it’s one libertarianish issue that’s managed to work itself into the political mainstream and be astoundingly successful once it had sufficient momentum to affect outcomes. I think this model could be easily replicated with other issues if more libertarian activists would pick some issues that are short term winnable, and push those out into the political arena.
But the difficulty for libertarians activists is that it will mean making alliance with people who don’t buy your whole philosophy. We have many non-libertarians with us on the gun issue, and sometimes that friction comes to the surface. But its only through coalition building that you can get anywhere. A lot of libertarian activists seems to be OK with this on the gun issue, but talk about replicating that system with other issues, and they get difficult. Try to talk about which issues aren’t winnable right now, they don’t want to hear it.
Liberty is a never ending battle. We will never win. Like the game Whack-a-Mole, it’s frustrating, and sometimes it seems like you’re doing all you can to just hold the line. But giving up is a sure way to lose at Whack-a-Mole, so to libertarians, I offer this: “Keep whacking!” How’s that for a motto?
From the Times Leader:
Many women won’t leave the house without a purse or lip gloss. But for others, like Barb Smith of Sugarloaf, the daily routine includes something more.
A handgun.
Smith carries the gun during her long commutes to a local hospital — for protection, she said. The side roads she takes to shorten her drive don’t give her a good feeling, but knowing she has her handgun makes her feel secure.
There are between 17,000 and 20,000 license-to-carry firearms permits in Luzerne County though Sheriff Michael Savokinas said he does not know how many have been issued to women. The county’s application for a permit to carry a gun asks for the applicant’s gender but Savokinas said there is no way to determine the number of women with permits because of a recent computer problem.
Some area gun shop owners have noticed an upward trend in the number of women who are buying guns and seeking permits to carry the weapons for self-defense.
Read the whole thing. We’re doing pretty good if my only real complaint about the article is that they misspelled Beretta. I’m almost ready to say I think the media is getting better about our issue lately.
The Democratic National Committee is charging McCain with violating McCain-Feingold.
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded that “Howard Dean’s hypocrisy is breathtaking given that in 2003 he withdrew from the matching funds system in exactly the same way that John McCain is doing today.â€
Dean and the DNC sought to emphasize that when Dean was running for president, he never hinged his loan on a promise of public financing.
You made this bed Johnny boy, and now you can sleep in it.
Hat tip to Of Arms and the Law
More from Dave Kopel, an interview with Joe Olsen of Academics for the Second Amendment. They talk about ASA’s amicus brief filed in the Heller case.